Junior Recruiting is underway

Its playoff time in Texas and while over 500 teams made the playoffs; a bigger number put their equipment away. With the season winding down, many juniors are thinking about recruiting (or at least their parents-read “over-eager” dads).

Signing Day for the seniors—class of 2013—is February 6th, 2013 and as colleges complete their current recruiting lists by obtaining verbal commitments, many are turning their attention to the evaluation of juniors. If you are a junior and your team is still playing in the playoffs, tell your dad to chill out, and keep playing and keep winning. The most important thing in recruiting is having good video for college coaches to evaluate and making a deep playoff run, especially deep into December, is the very best thing you can do.

Once your season is over, you need to sit down with your high school coach and determine which are your best games. Your position coach will have graded each and every play you made and will be the best person to help you determine your best performances. Remember your best performance isn’t always the one where you accumulated the best statistics.

Some college coaches like highlight tapes, but all like game tapes. Making a highlight tape can sometimes be time-consuming and at times expensive, especially if you put a lot of “bells and whistles” on it, things like fancy graphics and loud music. That kind of tape may be great for a Christmas present for your grandparents, but college coaches are going to turn down the sound and fast-forward to the actual plays. They want to see you play!

Highlight tapes are good in that they showcase you at your best, but if you make one, make sure you put your best game on your tape also. College
coaches will watch whatever you send, but BY FAR the best approach is to make sure your video is “online”.  DVDs have become a thing of the past.

Randy Rodgers