Get Your Volleyball Athlete Recruited

　
By: Krystal W. Abbott

In a perfect world, your potential collegiate level high school volleyball player will some how miraculously be discovered by a slew of college recruiters and they will all find out when he or she is playing so they can come observe their level of play. Then they will just love him or her and you will have tons of college recruiters knocking at your door begging your daughter or son to join their volleyball program. Well, the world is not perfect and that is not at all how it works! Getting your child recruited can be summed up in one word – Proactivity! Once you have identified the 30 or fewer schools on your recruitment list, go to each of the university websites and find the e-mail addresses for each head coach, assistant coach, associate coach and director of volleyball operations for each of your listed universities. Put these addresses into a group e-mail data base. Have your athlete send a group e-mail introducing him or herself and attach their volleyball resume with all of their contact information, volleyball stats, high school and club experience, and academic and extra curricular information. Then, whenever your athlete does something worth reporting to a college coach (i.e., local newspaper acknowledgment, a tournament win, you tube video link of some volleyball game footage, pictures, etc.) send it in the group e-mail addressees. This will save a lot of time and will give your athlete nationwide exposure with the click of the "send" button. 

The key is that you must be proactive in helping your athlete market themselves and in helping to give them exposure to their identified college coaches. Once you have your tournament or high school game schedule, send that to the college coaches so they can mark their calendars and make an effort to see your athlete play if they are interested. No coach will ever know about your athlete unless you tell them and show them! Take action and be proactive in your athlete’s journey to being a recruited college volleyball player!