Student Perspective

I started my college recruiting process at the beginning of my sophomore year.  The first thing I did was make a resume for myself.  On the resume I wrote down some of my accomplishments, honors and skills.  Then I was told I needed to make a highlight video so that I could send both my video and resume to college coaches. I realized that most players pay professionals a lot of money to make their highlight videos. So I set out to create my own “highlight” video to showcase my soccer skills. Some of my friends directed me to the school’s computer lab.  That is where I went after school for the next couple weeks for hours at a time. Adobe Premier Pro was the editing software that I was told to use by the teacher.  While completing the video I would raise my hand and ask anyone I could for help because I was determined to become comfortable with the software and also finish making my highlight video. I learned how to download Youtube videos onto the computer and then cut them up into clips with my highlights. I made a cover page with a legacy title that showed all my information, including my academic and athletic information. After finishing my first videos I was happy with how it turned out. It was anything special but it did the job. 

After finishing a highlight video I was told to send my video and resume out to college coaches before every tournament.  And that’s what I did before and after every tournament.  I made sure that I wasn’t a pest but I was very diligent and made sure that the coaches were all hearing from you.  

Fast forward to the beginning of senior year I was still contacting college coaches hoping to get recruited.  Contacting coaches in various ways before and after every tournament.  Although some of the coaches were terrible with communication I would still reach out to them.  Every time I maybe didn’t want to send an email for whatever reason I would ask myself “what could be the worst thing that could happen to me from sending these emails?” and the answer would be a No, but I knew that was never going to be enough to stop me from trying to pursue my goal.  

If there is one thing I can emphasize about this process is that it won't always be easy and you really need to think about what your goals are. For example, if you want to play at the division 1 level unless you are a top ranked athlete in the country you probably have to sacrifice lots of time to reach this goal just like I did.

After writing hundreds of emails to college coaches -  being persistent in the college recruiting process - I was able to get offered a spot on a division 1 soccer program.