USING TECHNOLOGY TO HELP YOUR ATHLETE GET EXPOSURE
By – John Jordan – Executive Director – Boyshoopscout.com & Girlshoopscout.com
One of the things I have learned over the years is that parents and even some high school coaches do
not fully understand how busy a college assistant coach really is. The amount of responsibility they have is
enormous and the demands on their time is never ending. What I have found is that the easier you make it for
your player to be recruited the more likely they are to get recruited or another way to put it might be; the less
work you make for an assistant coach to have go through to see your player, the more likely they are to pay
attention to your student-athlete.
For a college coach to make a decision to recruit a student-athlete several preliminary things have to be
taken care of. First of all, the head coach needs to see the player play. The head coach is usually not going to
be the first member of the staff to see a potential recruit in action. In most all cases the first line of defense is
the assistant coach. This insulates the head coach from having to deal with players who may not be on the
level they need for their program. The head coach expects his assistants to screen potential players either by
seeing them play in person or at least seeing them on film to determine they have the necessary athletic ability
to compete on their level. The head coach also expects his assistant coach to make sure the player in
question is academically qualified to attend their institution. In some programs the basketball office may get as
many as two dozen tapes or DVD’s per week from “potential recruits”. Most programs make a sincere effort to
view as many of these tapes as possible but I am sure many end up going unopened. I am also sure this duty
usually falls with the low man on the coaching totem poll, which in many cases is a graduate or part-time
assistant. An assistant coach’s reputation is on the line when they recommend a player for the head coach to
take a look at. Assistant coaches are not going to make their bosses mad so chances are they are not going
to pass a recruit onto the head man unless they are pretty sure he or she is the kind of player that head coach
is looking for. If they do see a player on one of these disks they like, then they have to go through the process
of getting a transcript sent just to make sure the player is okay in the classroom. All of this makes for lots of
work and time for the assistant coach.
As a high school coach or parent your first job in getting your player recruited is in essence to recruit the
assistant coach yourself. This usually starts with a phone call or email. I prefer a phone call followed by an
email. I tell the assistant coach that I am going to include everything in that email that they need to make a
determination if my player is worth passing onto their head coach. They appreciate this approach, it saves
them tons of time in trying to track things down. In that email we include a short bio on the player, an
assessment of their strength and weaknesses, and a summary of the level of competition they have played
against highlighting big games against big named players already signed or being recruited. That part of the
procedure is pretty standard and I am sure is followed by many high school coaches and parents. The other
two things we include in that email sets us apart and I am convinced is one reason we have so many of our
kids recruited. We include a PDF file of their high school transcript (We have our kids parents sign a
permission form at the beginning of the year giving us permission to do this.) and a link to a video of one of
their better games of the season. The PDF of the transcript you can probably figure out or just scan the
transcript and make an image file out of it. The video portion takes a bit more work but can be done relatively
easily and I will explain how.
Most all schools now use DVD recorders or cameras with a hard drive to tape their games. What you do
once you have a copy of a good game is you then upload that entire game to google video. The website for
that is www.video.google.com We like Google Video because it allows you to have unlimited storage which You
Tube does not and like You Tube it is totally free.The process can take a little time but is very simple and has
easy to follow directions. Once the video is uploaded it has to go through a screening process from Google
that usually takes 4-6 hours. Once that process is complete the video will be online at video.google with it’s
own URL (Web Address) and be accessible to anybody at anytime. What we do in the email to the college
coach is copy and paste that URL Link into the email itself and tell them just to click on the link and it will
instantly take them to a video of our player in action. To see how easy it works, Click Here to see Veritas
against Oak Hill this year. This was a great game for our sophomore point guard as he had 21 pts with only 2
turnovers with the nation's number 1 player, Brandon Jennings guarding him. This process has worked great
for us, in fact on our school athletic page (www.veritasnc.org) we have several links to videos of our games
and many times while I am talking to a college coach they will go to our page and click on the video while still
on the phone with me. If they like what they see it makes it real easy to send to their head coach, they simply
forward the email with the link in it or copy and paste the link themselves and put it in an email to their head
coach.
As you can see by doing these simple two extra steps we have saved the assistant coach a ton of leg
work. They do not have to worry about calling our school counselor for a transcript because we have it right
there for them. They do not have to open a letter and pull out a DVD then insert it, then wait for it to load, they
simply click on a link in an email and they have the same thing. If they like the athlete they do not have to run
the DVD next door or make copies of it or anything for their head coach, they just forward the link to him. I
would encourage any high school coach or parent who is serious about helping their student athlete get
recruited to consider trying some of these tried and true methods.