Friday, May 14, 2010

What's the Best High School Athlete Online Recruiting Website?

High School athletes are always stressing about being recruited. Will I go to a Division 1 school? When is the best time to email a coach? What should the videos I send contain? There are a couple websites that reach out to coaches and allow you to focus more on performing, rather than propagandising. Some of my preferred websites are beRecruited.com, Takkle.com, JumpForward.com, Maxpreps.com, and baseballwebtv.com. All of the sites are a proactive way to get recruited.

beRecruited.com is an excellent website that allows several different high school sports to be recruited. NCAA, NAIA, JUCO, you name it and you will find a coach that will show interest in you. As a baseball player it allowed me to show every stat I had, my accolades, pictures, videos, even my own blog. There is a tracker that lets you know which coach looked at your profile, and even what time they looked! My favorite tool is the "Letter Generator". It allows you to email coaches with either your own idea or it has four basic recruiting layouts coaches look to read upon receiving an email. It will add a signature as well as your address. It is by far the best website for athletes to get in touch with college coaches. A huge 5 out of 5!!

Takkle.com is a website for all high school sports. It is more of a social website approach to being recruited. The down side of this website is that you have a wall (much like facebook) that your competitors can write on to make you look bad. There also is no way for you to know if coaches are looking at your profile. A big plus side though is that they are an affiliate of ESPN the magazine. Each month they take 9 athletes from the site and give them a 5-7 line report in the magazine. This is a huge boost in the recruiting process. You are voted on by your peers, so make sure you suck up to as many people as you can =). A solid website overall and a 4 out of 5 in my book.

JumpForward.com is a website built for all types of recruits. A very easy to use website, and gains more members everyday. Coaches at all levels are members of this site and I have seen quite amount of NCAA D2 and D3's. I had problems getting videos on the site but pictures uploaded perfect. Not quite my favorite but a 3 1/3 out of 5.

Maxpreps.com is a nationally known recruiting website but in my mind a tad over-rated. You must have your high school coach as a member in order to enter stats. Each high school in the nation has a profile and to upload pictures or video it's from a "fan" page. A little frustrating to use because it favors basketball and football. So if you play either of those make sure your coach joins this site! A lot of coaches from every level look at maxpreps so if it weren't for its national creditability it be a whack site. I give it a 3 out of 5.

baseballwebtv.com isn't what is sounds to be. Well in a way it is but it doesn't focus on only baseball. All major high school sports are welcomed on this site. Your main page includes your stats and any videos you upload. You also may have pictures on the site as well as friends can write on your "wall" to help boost your recruitment. The only down side is that you can't tell when a coach looks at your profile. Very easy to use and a 3 out of 5.

Remember coaches are very buisy and dont have time answer every recruite. Give them a one week window to respond before you contact them again. Videos should always be 2-3 minuets long and make sure you look presentable. Jersey tucked in and go all out on the video! Game clips are highly prefered! Another key thing to remeber when emailing a coach your email adress is respectable. No one wants to recruite "Jthug313@aol.com". Hope this helps!!

Going Deep,

Alan

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