Volleyball Q&A

Episode 2: Starting the Volleyball Recruiting Maze: Q&A Phone Call

• VBQA • Season 1 • Episode 2

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This episode discusses a family's journey towards a June 15th live recruiting date for their volleyball player. Topics covered include platforms for recruitment, the importance of videos in showcasing skills, recommendations for sending emails to coaches, dealing with data overload, and considering factors beyond volleyball skills, like academics and personal fit, in the college selection process.

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Episode 2 Recruiting Phone Call

Host: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Volleyball Q& A Podcast. We dive into Facebook, social, and online forums, and take your direct questions to try to tackle the crazy journey that is Prep Volleyball. Today's episode comes courtesy of a family ramping up for their June 15th live recruiting date. The player's mother reached out to me looking for information on a few things like what websites to use.

Emails how often they should send them and a little bit about highlight videos We jumped on a call and hit a few of her key questions Where are you guys at in the season how many qualifiers have you done and what do you have left at this point? 

Caller: We did triple crown did okay there and then we just got back from chicago Where we won the 15 open.

Yes, that 

Host: was huge, which is pretty exciting. That was very cool. Very cool Yeah, we're having 

Caller: kansas city this weekend. Okay, and then Or the show me and then we will be doing Lone 

Host: Star in April. Okay, [00:01:00] got it. So you have two left and you said up to this point you've sent a couple of bulk emails. Have you had any sort of traffic on the courts at this point yet in terms of the people you've sent emails to or anyone else that sent, have you had any real like college coaches traffic around your court at this point?

There's definitely 

Caller: college coaches there. It's hard to tell who they're watching. Good. Other than that, on sports recruits, all she's had is three or four colleges say, Hey, here's our camp schedule. We can talk to you until June 15th. And that's it. So that's where we're at. And right now she's got 40 colleges on our sports recruits.

I don't really know yet if that's the right mix, if we're targeting the right. Sure. 

Host: We're just trying to figure it all out. Okay. So you initially ask about. platforms. Let's start with that and then build off of that. You were asking about what website do I need? What do I need to set up? What needs to be there?

Any of the platforms you need to have something that you're holding place for your videos, all your information, [00:02:00] updates, things like that. And since the club provides sports recruits, it's fantastic. I think it's great. I know some people use field level and other things like that. I think sports recruits is great for a lot of reasons.

One, it makes it real concise for you to put everything in there. Number two, I love the fact that it does have all the contact information for the different schools in there. It makes it real easy for you to email out. And then the fact that you get some level of feedback or metrics on it to have some idea of what's going on based on the work you've done.

You can see the number of opens or if they've watched your video or those kinds of things, I felt like was really valuable feedback to have. So that's one of those that is a staple if it's not sports recruits It can be one of the other platforms that's out there or some people do their own standalone websites Since the club is providing that to you and it's free use that Because it does everything you really need it to do to be your base of operations if you will and then okay University Athlete is [00:03:00] something similar but different.

It has a lot of the same features in terms of setting up profiles and putting your information in there. And that was something that, that we did a lot just to keep it up to date so those mirrored each other. But it's not the primary function of University Athlete. University Athlete is what all of the coaches use to do, they check your schedule to see when you're playing.

And it's how they build their schedule for the tournaments for who they're going to go watch. University So they, if they get an email from you and they like what they see, they'll go through and add you to their watch list that's in there. And then they purchase the schedules for a tournament, say Kansas city that's coming up this weekend, and they can put in all their athletes that they're interested in.

And University Athlete helps them build a schedule for how they can cover all of those kids that they're trying to watch throughout the weekend. Oh, I gotcha. Right. Okay. It's necessary. You have to have that. And it needs to be up to date, especially. It's great to have your academic [00:04:00] information in there.

It's great to have your base measurables in there Just some of that stuff is we did I put videos in there I don't know that it's necessarily as important in there because In my experience what it seemed was they would look at the videos more so out of emails that were sent Or they would go back to your sports recruits profile to watch from there But having the information in university athlete It is an absolute, it does have a premium feature that's in there that you can purchase and I think it's 100 a year that allows you to see if they're doing evaluations on you and what conference they're doing.

So it'll say, let's say TCU did an eval. You would see an eval from a big 12 conference school, and you have to work your way backwards to figure out which one it is that it doesn't give you much more specificity than that. Those are a double edged sword. You can get caught up in watching university athlete, like how many reviews did we get off of that match?

Was that good? Was that bad? [00:05:00] And then also it's real fuzzy. On what an actual review or whatever they call it in there is sometimes it can just be a change in status of going from curious to maybe more curious, it can be not interested. Every one of those counts as an eval in there. It's not even necessarily a note.

And you don't know what any of it means. You go away. Is that good? Is that bad? I don't know. But, the main function of University Athlete is for them to be able to know you're there, get your schedule, you don't need to send them your schedule and emails, and to be able to build you into their schedule so they can make sure and come by and see you and then do a quick e mail.

Caller: Okay. So, like right now, she's not in University Athlete, so does that mean she's not even on the radar? 

Host: I would imagine that she is in there. You may not have set up an account. But if your club, which I know your club does submits their schedules, then they are in there [00:06:00] and she is a player that's in there.

So if she shows up on say AES when you guys are looking at schedules or things of that nature, she's in University Athlete. So she's in there. You guys just need to set up a profile in order to claim her profile that exists on there so that you can get access to it and start doing the updates on there.

Okay, gotcha. I can do that. Okay. Really with those two things, your bases are essentially covered as long as you have a place like a YouTube channel or something like that that you can put up the video. And that, from a foundational standpoint, is all you need to really do what you need to do. Okay. 

Caller: So right now we're using, um, mostly the Video Off Huddle.

There's a Great. 

Host: Yep. 

Caller: Okay. There's two parents that run two different video streams. Okay. I don't know. They stream to Facebook. One records for Hudl. Okay. The other one records for Sideline HD. [00:07:00] Okay. Yep. And Hudl's just easier to pull video off of. Right now we're pulling the manufactured videos. She's an outside hitter.

Yeah. So every video that they manufacture automatically is kills. That's great, but she's a six rotation player. So that doesn't matter. I need blocks. I need passing. I need serve. So I wish you could tell huddle, Hey, I'm interested in more than just kills 

Host: here. Okay. So from an automated, I'm going to give two different parts of the answer on this.

So from an automated standpoint, you don't want to use those. There is a way to go into huddle and for you to select your plays and build your own highlight videos. And we just started 

Caller: doing that on tuesday. That's awesome figured out how to do that good because all we had before was the manufactured 

Host: videos Okay, that's imperative Okay from an these are my analytics and not anybody else's they're not industry standards or anything if If a coach watched your video for 40 seconds, you are killing it.

Okay, so they don't watch [00:08:00] more than about 40 seconds on average if they really like you. If they don't like you, or if they really like you, you might get 5 seconds because they just want to watch the first play. And they don't care because their mind is made up. But Okay. They don't watch much of the video.

So the ones that are longer, that have the other stuff, it is extremely rare until you get to the very end part of your recruiting process for them to watch full videos. The only time that I ever saw coaches watching two minutes plus a video was if they were getting down to, it's this player or this player, and we need to see everything we can see in order to make the final decision.

So she's an outside hitter and she's a six rotation outside hitter, but quite honestly, that doesn't really matter. What matters is that she's an outside hitter. The mentality of a lot of college coaches is no matter what they can fix anything. And they feel like they can teach people to pass. If you're a hitter, [00:09:00] you need to lead with your best hit.

Your best swing, it needs to be right out of the gates, the very first thing, because if they watch, they don't want to see a serve first, they don't want to see a dig first, they don't want to see a block first. They want to see a kill. They need to see what you do and how you do it best. It needs to be a definitive, it really and truly needs to be the best swing of the day.

or the weekend every single time out of the gates and you need to work your way down that direction. The two most important skills are going to be attacking and they are going to be blocking. Defense and serve receive are ancillary and they're things that they find out about down the road and serving doesn't matter at all.

It's a it's a non factor in terms of an outside hitter and when you're putting your video together When you're picking what's a great swing you need to be thinking like a college coach when you're putting those together It's not necessarily about what was the most fun play. They want [00:10:00] to see how high you jump They want to see how high you contact the ball and they want to see how hard you contact the ball.

Those three things are the things that they feel it's really hard to teach those. At a collegiate level, the blocking goes up significantly in terms of the height. So if you're contacting the ball above the tape, Or in the lower half to lower third, that swing doesn't need to be in your highlight video unless it's a tempo set that you just crushed.

But for the most part, what needs to be seen is if you went up and got a ball up near the top of the antenna and put it down, that's what's going to get their attention. So looking at high contact points and consistency of that is a huge deal because raw athleticism And then strength are two of the biggest things that they look for, because they're also looking for durability, the speed.

In physicality of the game from you guys age group goes up [00:11:00] exponentially every year It's not like it's a little bit more incremental. It's a huge jump for the next two years So the physicality gets a lot more in terms of net play and it's not about controlling the net At the net side, it's about controlling one to two feet on the other side of the net.

Being able to demonstrate that ability to get off the ground and then hold your ground on blocking and being physical there or physical on your swings is the most premium of things to show. They can teach you shots. They can teach you how to use the court better. If you crush a ball, and you went up and got it, and it was up at the top of the pen, and they dug it, it doesn't matter.

That still may be your lead swing. It doesn't necessarily even have to be a kill for it to be the best play. Gotcha. Okay. 

Caller: We can do 

Host: that. Now, in terms of the other thing you asked about was volume of emails, what's our consistency? What, where should we be at? Those kinds of [00:12:00] things for where you guys are in the season, because it winds down fast and goes into a quiet period in May where there's not a lot going on.

And, but then https: otter. ai

Getting to June 15th, and it's important to understand that really and truly, and I don't know that I understood this terribly well, but June 15th really and truly is the start date. It is not anywhere close to a finish date. So having that in mind that it's, it almost feels like we almost felt like we were building towards Christmas and it was such a wrong approach to have that thought process.

It was really and truly just the first time that you could have some initial conversations and the nature of things has changed so much in terms of the duration. of recruiting that really and truly it is more about longevity and holding in the [00:13:00] process and finding the right opportunity and not expecting everything to happen on June 15th and then it's done.

That's going to happen for about three to five kids and then after that it's a totally different process of just moving through the flow. Of it over the next it can be six months. It can be eight months It can be over a year with the way things are now it didn't used to be that way But that looks like it's becoming more the norm because even at the 25s, there are some awesome players That are out there And we're at month what eight or nine at this point and there I still see them posting highlight videos on social There's not much going on.

So It really is slow down in your mind on the, in terms of the pressure that kind of comes around that date because it really is a very transitory date. It's not a, it's not an end by any stretch. So that being said, backing up from that, when you're talking about [00:14:00] emails, it's definitely time for you guys to start ramping up your volume that you're sending emails out.

With having a qualifier this weekend, you got to get an email to everybody you're interested in inviting them to come watch ASAP because they usually start planning their calendars on Mondays or Tuesdays prior to those qualifiers. You're going to want to do that every single time. But I would say between, for where we are being two months out, I would start trying to communicate with your top schools at least every two weeks at this point.

It's a lot. We had tricks that we would do where we, I got like little apps on my Mac that allowed me to do bulk copy paste, and we would put in the deer coaches and put in their name, and we would have one paragraph that for our top 20 schools. That was something that was very [00:15:00] specific about their school.

So it showed we were following them or interested in them. Then we'd have a little blurb about what we were working on or trying to work on or what we were going through or what we wanted to show in our current highlight video. And then we'd have our highlights and, Hey, I'm going to be at this. Please come watch me play.

It kept it pretty short. Okay. So 

Caller: you say a video, you would just copy a link from huddle, like right video. You copy it, paste it into the actual video. Inside sports 

Host: recruits Sports recruits 

Caller: I 

Host: always ended up embedding videos in sports recruits. So it was there with all the other information And then I would copy the link to that video And paste it into the email And just put a little bold.

Here's my highlights from my last tournament and that was great because you could see who watched the video And so that was a I thought that was a big help But if you don't have video in your email, it's not going to get read. [00:16:00] And then, once you get to the tournament, it's hard, but you're going to want to keep your eyes open.

And if you see any of those schools there, Watching make a list because it's great to have the opportunity to send a thank you email as a follow up and a lot of them get read on Sundays and Mondays when they're traveling back to their campus. 

Caller: Okay. So do you, if you see a coach there and they happen to be on your list, you just make the assumption that they're there to see you and not one of your 

Host: teammates?

Absolutely. They're definitely there to see you. Every single one of them for sure. I think always err on the side of interest because it's going to come down to, there's going to be a certain point where there are kids, like there's lots of kids vying for these positions. One of the biggest fears of schools right now is having a kid come in and then a kid leave because they're not really that interested or they weren't that interested.

So you really have to express a lot of interest and the best way to do that, even [00:17:00] if you're When they can't talk to you is to continue to just send them information over and over and over again. And you'll get a whole lot of those, Hey, here's our camp information, June 15th. Emails back and I think that's great because it means they interface with you just in some way being persistent is good I don't have absolute numbers on this, but I've seen coaches post on social I saw a mid major coach post that she gets about 150 to 200 emails a day that are recruiting emails And if you take that all the way up to power for or even some of the other high profile emails schools.

I've asked one of our assistant coaches and they'll get a thousand emails a day. So they may not necessarily even get to yours. When you send this one, but if you're consistent, there's a higher probability that they'll see one of yours at the top of the queue at [00:18:00] some point. And that's really what you're looking for is that one opportunity, right?

That one chance to pass through. And that's why it's so important to just have come out of the gates with your best kill right off the bat. Oh, it's 

Caller: overwhelming. I will tell you that. It's a lot. I didn't realize how much work it was on the part of the athlete and the parents. Yeah, 

Host: it's a tremendous amount.

It's a lot of work. We joked that I spent at least another full time job's worth of time trying to sort through everything we were doing. Don't tell me that. I don't have 

Caller: that much time available 

Host: in my life. I understand. I understand. But I can easily 

Caller: see it's, yeah, and I've, as you mentioned on University Athlete, more data.

I don't need more data because more data is just more, it makes it more overwhelming. 

Host: It is. It's hard because in some way, the biggest, the biggest takeaway and probably the best way to wind down, because it just gets more and more kind of, like I said, there's more spider veins that just keep moving out from these different, you know, areas.

Uh, [00:19:00] juncture points of all these different things you can do is there's so much data you can gather. And I tried to do it the way that I did it for work in terms of like direct marketing things and manage everything that way and try to understand and learn about. What this audience was and what they did and it's a false sense of control a lot of times when you do it from a data Standpoint you think you're getting somewhere and you think you're understanding something and it almost always takes a hard left turn So I don't know that it's necessarily the best thing Other than it's a little comforting to feel like you have some element of control in the situation when you're working through and looking at data and numbers to go, we're moving in the right direction, we're getting some sort of response, we're getting something that's happening and that will help keep you going, but it's fool's gold.

Because I don't know many people. Again, I know maybe three people that their process [00:20:00] was, I knew where I wanted to go. They wanted me. I sent emails. We got there. Almost everybody else. I know it was like, I had no idea I was going to end up where I ended up and I don't know how I ended up here, but it's so great.

And it was just almost being in motion or having some momentum helped them create some sort of luck that created an opportunity for them to end up where they ended up. Okay. 

Caller: Yeah, we're so on the front end, like I, we're trying to figure out like what is her. Is she a D1 player? Is she a top D1? Is she a low bottom D1?

Is she a D2? What? And some D2 programs that are way better than D1 programs. And 

Host: like where does 

Caller: she belong? What is her talent level? And that's really hard. I have no idea. I have no idea what the answer 

Host: is. Go talk to your coach. Your coach has seen and your coaches at your age group, at your club have seen enough kids [00:21:00] and know where they ended up.

They can give you an evaluation to say this is roughly the window you fall in. And you don't have to take that as hard fact. It's a safe place to be. Like if you want the process to be short, find the right match, right? Like really and truly, if you want the process to be short, like I look back and there's a group of schools that clearly had us matched and they were all over us on day one and we could have had a really short process.

But the evaluation that we got didn't match with that level of school. And so we continued to push and it took longer to get through all of that to get there. But if you don't want a long process and it gets to be stressful and you're tired of it, there's going to be, you can always go on level or down and there's something available.

If you want to fight for something else, it definitely can take longer and it can be more of a challenge. So it's part of that, [00:22:00] like when you're thinking through the process, there'll be a point where you go. Do I want to keep fighting? Do I want to keep fighting? Maybe you don't. Maybe you guys are going to nail it right out of the gate.

Maybe you're going to be one of the lucky ones that it all works out perfectly. And that would be so amazing if it does. It's, I don't know how to predict what that looks like, but if it does, it's fantastic. But your coaches at your club are really savvy and they know what they're looking at. And I would go ask them, take your list.

There's a recruiting coordinator there. Take your list and say, here's what I'm thinking. And they'll be honest with you and you don't have to take their word as gospel. But what may help is for them to say, if they give you a certain bracket to work in. Those are pretty safe. And if you want a faster process, target those and go hard at them.

And if not, you can go ahead and still, but still keep a couple of reaches. Always have a couple of reaches out there. 

Caller: Yeah. Okay, you know, [00:23:00] that's helpful. I'll probably have more questions for you. Absolutely June 5th When she's eligible for them to contact her definitely Don't get a text on June 15th.

Your life's not over. No, 

Host: it's fine. Yeah, and quite honestly Your next big Hallmark We really want to hit hard during these qualifiers and then you're gonna have this kind of down time Your next big things that kind of cluster together are gonna be the college coaches camps Which usually happen a couple of weeks before June 15th And then you have June 15th And then the other kicker is the schools you actually are really interested in your top schools A lot of them will have camps right at June 15th and being on campus and showing interest that way is a pretty significant deal, too But you're going to, but you, there's just not enough time, quite honestly, to get to all of them.

You really are going to have to be prioritized and think through which ones do we want to go to? Which ones do we want to pass on? We would try to do a mix of, we know we're [00:24:00] going to hit this group of people at the college coaches camps, and these are in our tier two, tier ones, we would try to get there on campus.

Go ahead and start looking at some of those dates too because I know some of those are getting released and start making a calendar so you can see what falls when because the other devious thing they do is they'll all schedule camps on the same few days. So there might be seven schools you want to go to, but only three windows of camps during the summer.

So you really only get three chances to go to three schools. So yeah, there's 

Caller: one school she's interested in and their camp is during nationals. 

Host: Uh, that's kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah. That's not good. But we've done them too. 

Caller: And for her, like she, honestly, she really does not know. She doesn't know where she wants to go to school.

She's open to anything. And for us, what's really important is the coach that she, that she's Has a vibe with, or whatever, academic support, like tutoring, she's gonna, [00:25:00] she's gonna need that. She's not a stellar 

Host: student. She's just not. That's not her talent. Yeah. You'll get awesome of that wherever you go.

Yeah. 

Caller: Yeah, she'll need academic support and we want a program that really focuses on nutrition and conditioning. Yep. Or most of them do. Yeah. Conditioning, I don't, they all do nutrition, but. Yeah. That's really, that's really important to my husband is the nutrition side as well. 

Host: Sure. And when you're trying to narrow down, the last piece of information I would say is start with, begin at the end.

What does she want to be when she grows up? You need to look at the schools and make sure if, that they offer the majors that she's interested in when she gets done, if they don't offer it, you need to rule them out because bottom line, like this is a consuming process. It feels like there's a whole lot and it's the whole world, but just remember she's got 60 years of life left after she gets done playing, use it as an avenue to get to where she wants to be [00:26:00] as a grownup.

And figure out what she wants to do, go through your list and make sure that they have those majors available. And if they don't, go ahead and cross them off because it's not worth spending the time or resources if it's not there. 

Caller: Okay, so last question for you. So there's like all these. Prep Volleyball, Prep Dig, I don't know, you know how long they are.

They all are subscription based, they're all publishing all these things. Yep. Do you need to invest in subscriptions to 

Host: those or not? It depends on how much you want your blood pressure to go up or down. Really and truly, they're, they're there to make money, they're there to get clicks. On one hand, they, it's real easy to say, we want to invest in the kids and we're trying to give back.

Yep. Yep. Yep. I would say that, that Prep Dig is probably one of the best at that. I've seen and met a lot of the guys that write for those, and they've all been genuinely interested in the kids that they cover. And they've written, I've [00:27:00] seen some pieces that they've written about kids that have been some of the best in terms of focusing on character and who they are to go along with the volleyball aspect of things.

And I see them in person covering a lot of stuff themselves with their eyeballs. So, I like them the best. Are they perfect? No. Things get wonky sometimes with them. Stay far away from prep volleyball. My anecdote about that is, there's a tournament that we went to a couple of years ago and played. And they put out the all tournament team for the tournament afterwards with accolades and they picked a kid that had surgery two weeks ago, whose arm was in a cast as an, as the all tournament setter.

And it continues to be that way. That one publication can't seem to get it squared away. That would be the one I would stay away from. It's really, it's so hard because you start seeing or reading [00:28:00] about other people that are your peers or friends and you get caught up in all of that and it really just adds another layer of angst to things.

It's about what do you want your experience to be? Are you seeking out trying to have coverage and a name and are you trying to build it for NIL and do you need a social presence and all those kinds of things? That's a personality question and a family culture question. That you guys have to address But I don't think that any of them quite frankly have enough manpower to adequately cover With the growth of the sport what's out there?

And it's real easy for them to get hyper fixated on a really small group very quickly of kids and each age group And all you do is spend the next three or four years reading about the same 15 kids per age group and it's just maddening after a while. Okay. Yeah. 

Caller: That's good to know. All right. Well, I sure appreciate your time.

Host: Recruiting is a really individual [00:29:00] process. There's a lot of ups and downs and twists and turns that are very peculiar to each individual family. There's lots of opinions too on how to handle it. This is just mine from my experience that we went through. And from other people that went through it at the same time as we did as well.

I'd love to hear your feedback. Let me know if you agree, disagree. Send me information or tips that you have that might be different than what's here. The whole point to this is getting the information out so other people have better experiences going through this and their ramp up is a lot easier getting into the process.

Hey, I sure appreciate your time today. If you have any feedback, questions, or want to be a guest, feel free to email me. The ball QA at gmail. com or have a look at our Facebook or Twitter at the ball QA or Instagram at volleyball QA Thanks again for listening and talk to you next [00:30:00] time