Many college coaches and recruiters belong to several recruiting services that frequently send out programs or lists of high school talent. These lists likely contain 100's of name with very little info on players that are not ranked in the top few. So, hypothetically, if I am a Division II coach and I am looking at this list, realizing full well that the top players are going to Division I schools, I start making my way down looking for unsigned players that might be able to play at my level. As the recruiting services do not have an infinite amount of time and resources they can not do a bio on every player. That is why you need to create your own bio or profile.
When you are doing a report for school and your teacher says find info on "Insert Name" I am willing to bet the majority of people's first action is to "Google" that person. The same goes for college coaches. When someone drops a name on them at a tournament or camp you can bet they check the local newspapers and Google for info. Your job is to give them something to find. A good first step is setting up a profile with
VAD if you have not already. But, unfortunately setting up an account with your name and city is not enough. It is VITAL to give those search engines like Yahoo and Google something index. That is why you should enter as much sport related detail into your profile as possible. I have noticed in our site logs that some of our users are arriving from the search engines via keywords that are not on our site's
front page. When I dig a little deeper I realize that people are doing searches for high school teams,
AAU teams, basketball camps and a bunch of other things then ultimately ending up on our athletes profiles. That is why we say it is crucial to place as much sports info on your profile as you can. It might seem pointless at the time but eventually it could be the difference between a coach discovering you or an equally talented athlete.
