The Problem for High School Athletes in the Digital Age Remains Getting Noticed by College Coaches

Some things never change

With all the online options available to high school athletes wanting to play at the college level, you’d think that all one would have to do is upload his or her profile on Rivals.com or Scout.com or post their video on YouTube and viola they would get recruited, right? Not so fast. The Digital Age, as it turns out, isn’t all that effective when it comes to the most crucial aspect of recruiting — getting noticed.

In actuality, all those options are bad news because they are like head fakes, they send you off in the wrong direction and by the time you recover, the chance to make a play the opportunity has passed you by. Think about it in relative terms. You’ve been playing on a travel or club team for how long — two, three, four, maybe even five years? And, in all that time, how many college coaches have walked up to your travel coach following a game and asked about you? Not many, right? You’ve seen them walking around, I-pad in hand, taking notes. But, as time goes by, you are starting to realize that they’re looking at other athletes instead of you. They aren’t sitting at your game intent on scouting you and learning from the coach more about you, are they? Nope.  Ain’t happening. To them you are nothing more than background noise.

Well, the same goes for putting your info on a free online site. How is it that a coach is going to happen to find you there? In fact, how many coaches do you think sit down at their desks and say, “I think I’ll log into the free site and discover the athlete that’s perfect for my program? Not many, if any. College coaches don’t recruit from sites which allow just anyone to upload their info. What would be the point? See, coaches are stingy with their time. In simple terms, they don’t have enough of it to go gallivanting off into Cyber World to discover talent. To them, there has to be some screening process in place and with nothing on these “free” sites to screen prospects, they would be wasting their time perusing candidate after candidate after candidate.

Why, then, would they spend hours trying to find a legitimate athlete when they can look at any NSR athlete and know that he or she has been personally scouted and interviewed by a real scout? The screening process is already in place for them. No NSR prospect is enrolled without being strictly qualified and coaches know this. We’ve been at the recruiting game for 32 years. You don’t survive that long in a business if you haven’t met your customers’ needs year after year, day after day. Not possible.

It boils down to this: do you want college coaches to arrive at tournaments or other events with the express purpose of watching you? Tired of seeing them scout other athletes that are not as good as you? Want to get your just reward for all your hard work? Want to be evaluated and recruited for real? Think NSR.