August 22, 2011 in Articles by John

6 Tips for Using College Volleyball Recruiting Services

Coach goes into more detail about recruiting services in Inside College Volleyball, but here are a half-dozen primary tips for getting the most out of them.

1) Don’t bother with paper-based volleyball recruiting services. They are little more than a waste of trees in most cases. With current technology, there really isn’t a reason to rely on postal mailings, and mass-target fax services are often little more than scatter-shot efforts. They most often end up in the circular file. When I was coaching we got faxes all the time, and many of them weren’t even academically qualified for the school!

2) If you are working with a paid service (and any service, really), then you should absolutely make sure to provide accurate physical, club/high school and contact information, along with being able to upload/present current video.

3) Be active in your managing how volleyball recruiting services represent you. For example, if you are a 5’9″ OH with a 20″ vertical jump and average passing skills, then the service is wasting time contacting Top 25 programs in Division I since you’re not a good candidate for that level. Be active in your conversation with the service to make sure they are promoting you to the correct levels.

4) Everything a college volleyball recruiting service does you can do yourself. The question becomes do you have the time, energy, equipment and desire to do it yourself? A service will not make you better than you are, and they will not magically get you a scholarship to Stanford, but they can be a tool to help you with you future. Like all tools, it is up the the person holding it to make it work, not the other way around.

5) College coaches will always look at video via an e-mail or link. It might only get a 10-second viewing, but it will get a look. With this in mind, good video is better than good words. You can have a bio sheet that says you are next Olympian with your unreal stats, but coaches still want to see video (see the Best format for volleyball recruiting videos post for tips).

6) It is still your job to interact with coaches, to do research on the potential schools and programs and to follow up with requested information. College coaches do not want to work solely through a volleyball recruiting service. They are not your agent or manager (which is illegal per NCAA rules). The recruiting service is the entity which got the coach to contact you. That’s as far as it goes. Beyond that it is up to you and the coach to figure out if this is your future.

Basically, college volleyball recruiting services provide another available resource for players and college coaches to find each other. Used well, they can be very effective. If you expect them to be more than what they are – introductions – then you are likely to be disappointed.