Summer Sports Camps

What is the significance of being invited to a particular school’s sports camp?

College athletic programs hold sports camps, usually in the summer, for two main reasons. First, this is an opportunity for coaches to make extra money. In fact, some of them do quite well and count on this extra income to supplement their normal salaries. Second, it’s the perfect opportunity to evaluate potential prospects for their programs. Somewhere down the list of priorities is the teaching aspect of camps. So, when a college coach asks you specifically to attend his or her camp it probably means that they want to evaluate your skills to see if they may be interested in recruiting you later. They can do things at their camp to test you that they otherwise would be prohibited by NCAA rules from doing. As a prospect, you must be aware that just because the college showed enough interest to invite you to their camp it doesn’t mean they will necessarily recruit you later on. In fact, of all the players that a college invites to their camp many more are eliminated from consideration than are eventually recruited. You should treat going to a sports camp like a competition, because that’s what it is for a player who wants to play college sports. Send them a pre-camp scouting report. National Scouting Report does this for all their prospects so that the coaches know that the scouting reports are accurate and that the player is indeed a good prospect. The prospect videos that they also send give the coaches a  head start in their evaluations. Being singled out and invited to a college sports camp is indeed an honor; however, counting on that college to recruit you and in effect, putting all your eggs in one basket is a big mistake. Smart prospects will get national exposure with every college and not just those whose summer camp the prospect attended.