5 Keys for Holiday Tournament Recruitment By Stewart Brown
Traditional winter holidays’ and the school vacations that coincide with the holidays’ help create important recruitment opportunities for prospect and college coach alike. If you are attending a winter tournament be sure to follow these tips to increase your recruitment potential.
1. Update Your PrimeScout Profile
Continually update your profile to have current game and tournament schedules, contact information and reference materials (videos, statistics, links to newspapers etc.) – especially when you know that college coaches will be looking at your profiles. Remember that your profile is a portal of information that should be robust and up-to-date to help promote you to all college programs.
2. Email Coaches the Link to Your Events
As with your profile, you should keep your events calendar up-to-date. As soon as you are given your game schedules for tournaments, or any changes to your game schedule, update them on your profile page and email them to all the college coaches you want to see you play.
3. Update Events, Statistics and Upload References
Updating events with scores and having your statistics continually updated allows college coaches to see your progress and your successes. Remember your honesty when posting both game scores and statistics because there is always someone that can verify the numbers that you post – it may be the college coach himself – and you will be better recruited when you are accurate with your information.
4. Thank the Coaches for Coming to See You Play
Immediately after the tournament, email the coaches that came to see you play and thank them. If you know the specific game, or games, that coaches came to evaluate you, remind them of what they saw (always in a positive light even if you lost or didn’t play well).
5. Repeat the Cycle for Your Next Tournament
You will continually be recruiting yourself until you commit to a college or university. Do not stop updating your profile, events and statistics or emailing coaches encouraging them to see you play. Even if you do not think a coach is interested in you continue to include them in your recruitment efforts until them tell you otherwise.
The Holiday’s are always exciting and a great opportunity for you to make positive impressions on coaches at the hundreds of events scheduled throughout the country. Take full advantage of it by being prepared with your recruitment materials and schedules. Once you have been seen the next step is to go and visit campus.
Note: please have an adult walk around during games asking coaches where they are from and create a list for you and your teammates. You can use this list to contact coaches and thank them all for coming to see you play.