Softball College Recruiting - 7 Simple Ways to Separate Yourself

After the last post about college recruiting and the comments that were left, I do have some thoughts to share with you, but those will have to wait for a bit.  Right now, I wanted to share 7 Simple Ways to Separate Yourself from the Competition.

After all, college recruiting is obviously getting more competitive due to all the different avenues now available to student-athletes to get their name out there and to communicate with college coaches.  So when push comes to shove and you're going up and up with another student-athlete who has just as much to offer as you, what are you going to do to tip the scales in your favor?

Here are some simple things you can do to separate yourself from the competition:

• Respect your parents. How you treat others, especially your parents, tells a coach something about you.  Make sure the message you're sending is a positive one.
• Learn something about the school and team your are interested in or are communicating with.  How much you know about the school and program you're in touch with tells them something about how interested you really are in being there.  Think about it - if you were a coach trying to choose between two players of similar value to the team and you have one that you KNOW is interested in the program, knows about the school, and shows they want to be there and the other knows nothing and doesn't really seem interested - who would you choose?
• Have class. Conduct yourself in a manner you won't regret later.  Again - compare two similarly skilled players.  One will, without a doubt, represent your team and program well.  The other displays inappropriate behavior which demonstrates questionable decision making skills.  Which player do you choose?
• Be prompt in responding.  Guess what your promptness, or lack thereof, tells a coach about your interest level in their school or program.
• Have your ducks in a row. You can't say, "Hey coach, look at me" then not have the information they need to effectively evaluate you as a potential member of their team.  Don't forget test scores and transcripts in addition to playing stats and video clips.
• Personalize your correspondence. Generic e-mails, letters, or any other kind of correspondence is not going to help you stand out.  Personalized your communications with college coaches and make sure you address your correspondence correctly!  There's not much worse that sending a message to a college coach, but addressing it to the coach who used to coach there.
• Be honest. Lying about your athletic ability, grades, test scores, or anything else is NOT a good idea.  It's a waste of time for everyone involved.  Both you and the coach will be wasting precious time pursuing options that will never work out and will probably missing out on other valid opportunities in the process.

Sometimes it's the "little things" that make the biggest difference.  None of the tips listed above involve softball skills.  If a coach is looking at you and other players, chances are those other players all can throw, all can field, and all can hit.  So the deal-maker or deal-breaker may very well be influenced by non-softball criteria like the things listed above.

Make sure you're giving yourself every advantage possible!