It Is Important To Contact Colleges If You Aren’t Their Top Prospect
In the email, you should also include a highlight reel from your games. Make sure that it is versatile. For example if you play an attacking position in soccer don’t only show yourself scoring goals. Instead in addition include clips of you getting back on defense and making passes to put your teammates in a good position to score. image from Unsplash by Jeffrey F Lin
November 6, 2020
Many athletes work hard and hope that one day a college will notice them and show interest in them. Although it is possible for this to happen you have to also show interest in their college as well. For example, a D1 college has most of the time already picked out and scouted a couple of top-end athletes that they are going to try to get to come to their college. So if you aren’t one of their top prospects you have to take the initiative yourself and email them and show interest in their college.
When emailing the college always include all of the information you can about your career in your sport. You should always include your name, jersey number, your team name, graduation year, and GPA. These things are very important when emailing a coach you should not expect them to already know everything about you. Keep in mind that there are also thousands of kids that are probably emailing the head coach especially if it is a D1 college. In order to avoid the problem of being lost in the list of emails from other athletes, you should try contacting one of the assistant coaches instead or as well. To find the information of the coaches it will most likely be on the website. If there isn’t a website specifically dedicated to sports for the college it will be on the main college website in a section/tab (usually labeled athletics).
Emailing college coaches is very important but there are many things you should not say in an email. Here are two examples. Do not be cocky or overly confident if talking about your skills, instead you may want to talk about things you have achieved while being an athlete. Coaches do not want to read about how fast you run in every sentence, mention it maybe once or twice at most. When mentioning your team, do not talk down on your coaches and players and talk about if they weren’t your coach you would’ve been the best player in the nation. This shows bad character and just makes it look like you are blaming them instead of thinking about what you could have personally done better.
Overall it is important to be open-minded and don’t expect anything to be handed to you. Also when emailing a college do not only contact one college. Email multiple so that if your number one college you want to go to doesn’t show interest, you have other options.