Sports Recruiting: Making a Name for Yourself

I can all but guarantee at some point in your young sports career you have come across at least one player and thought "I can not believe that dude is ranked in the state?" or "that girl is being recruited by (insert school)?". The fact of the matter is great stats is not the only thing college coaches base their recruiting decisions on. Along with putting up credible numbers coaches are looking for players that play strong defense, work well within the confine of the team and many other tangible or even intangible things but, above all, coaches want players that win. You'll often find that great teams get picked apart at the end of the season by coaches looking to add a winner to their program. Although you might be a better player, a player who's team wins and progresses through the tournament often ends up with the scholarship. It's no secret that this has to do with exposure. Unfortunately, only a few teams can win state championships so that is why it is important to promote yourself. Whenever I am doing a research on a player for a college or even a high school coach the first thing I do is go to a search engine.....namely Google. It's amazing how much info can be gleaned from something as simple as a person's name. With that said, in the age of the Internet you have to make such things available to recruiters. A good way to start is by making a profile at Virtual Athletic Director. Once you create a profile you will have your own page with a unique URL such as www.virtualathleticdirector.com/110.htm - that link offers you a couple of things. One, you will soon be indexed by Google and other search engines giving recruiters something to look at when they search your name. Two, you now have a unique URL that you can spread around increasing your exposure. For example, you could join a high school sports forum, including the VAD Forum, and add your link to your signature. Every time you post a message the link will be at the bottom creating a large amount of visibility for your profile. There are countless things you can do to market yourself, just be creative. We will touch on this again in a few days.....

Free Sports Recruiting Consulting

In an effort to better help our student-athletes find athletic scholarships the VAD is now offering free personal consultation via our blog. If you have any questions about sports recruiting or our just looking for general advice please send us an email detailing what the issue is, what your future plans include and how we can help and we will answer you in a timely fashion. Please note that all responses will be posted to our blog as to help other student-athletes who may have the same recruiting related questions. If you would like to remain anonymous please let us know in the message.

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the VAD