3 MISTAKES TO AVOID DURING THE BASEBALL RECRUITING PROCESS

Finding the right college baseball program can be a long and difficult process.  When I was looking for a college to play for, I made some key mistakes along the way during my recruiting process.  Unfortunately, during my time as a college recruiting coordinator, I see many kids and families making the same mistakes that I made.  My goal for this blog is for you to learn a little bit from the things that I did wrong and to see the advantages of having a recruiting profile.

1)      I assumed that my high school coach would help me with my recruiting.

I played for a very strong high school baseball program in Central Ohio.  During my sophomore year, we won the district championship, and my junior year we were the state runner-up in Ohio.  My senior year, while we were knocked out in district play, we still had a very successful season.  I played with five guys who moved on to play college baseball, and I remember college coaches being at our games.  One of my classmates was receiving information from college programs that my high school coach received on his behalf.  Because of these things, I assumed that my high school coach was making all of these contacts and helping expose me to college coaches.

Looking back, I know that he was doing nothing for me or my teammates.  We were a talented group of kids that all played good travel baseball, and college coaches saw us play, especially during our run to the state championship game.  But the extent of our high school coach’s influence was coaching our team and putting together the lineup.  If you are under the assumption that your high school coach knows people and will take the time to contact coaches for you, you may be missing out on a lot of opportunities.  Most high school coaches have 5-6 college connections, they have lives outside of coaching, and quite frankly, they are not being paid to get their high school student-athletes recruited.  Some of you may be fortunate to play for a coach that helps you.  Most of you are going to be proactive.

2)      I assumed that schools would just find me

Playing on that successful high school team and playing high level American Legion Baseball during the summer, I assumed that all I had to do was perform and all those coaches in the stands would be knocking down my door.  Unless you are a guy with standout skills (ex. Throwing in the upper 80s or 90s, running 6.6 sixties, hitting with tremendous power), you are going to have to reach out to coaches.  I assumed that the coaches would see my performance and talk to me, and while it did happen once or twice, I was a decent to slightly above average player with no extraordinary skills.

If you are not actively hearing from college coaches, than you are not on their radar.  College coaches will reach out to the guys they want to connect with and who they know about.  If you want to hear from a college coach or from more college coaches, now is the time!  Create a game plan and start reacing out to them proactively.

3)      I didn’t shoot a skills video

While I did visit a few schools, I really narrowed my college choices down to two programs, Calvin College, which is where I ended up going, and Mount Vernon Nazarene University (formerly Mount Vernon Nazarene College).  The school that I really liked was MVNC.  They were about an hour from where I grew up, were 44-3 during my senior year of high school, they had guys drafted every year, one of my high school teammates was their starting shortstop, and my uncle was a Nazarene pastor who knew people that worked at the school.  I figured that this would be an awesome fit.

I contacted Coach Keith Veale, their longtime coach, and let him know that I was visiting the school and would like to meet with him.  I honestly can’t remember if we scheduled time or if we simply went to his office and asked if he was available, but my mom and I finally connected with him.  The first thing he asked me was if I brought any video with me.  This was the time before DVDs, so it was much more difficult to shoot film in those days.  I didn’t have any with me.  The conversation lasted about 10 minutes, and I knew right away that I was not a recruit for him.

Of course a coach that is working with student-athletes who are being drafted and winning all the time would want to see if I was actually a guy that could fit in to his program.  Fortunately, I ended up being a pretty successful college baseball player and easily could have played at MVNC, but without Coach Veale having seen me play, there was no way that he was going to give me a shot.

Those of you reading this are probably at many different points in the recruiting process.  But these are the three major mistakes that I made during my recruiting process.  If you find that you are making any of these mistakes, it’s time to take action.  By being active with your profile, making sure that your video footage is up to date, and by using the tools that you have in your account to reach out to college coaches, you can easily avoid these mistakes and greatly increase your chances of being recruited as well as finding the right fit for you.  Good luck!