Youth/Incoming Freshmen

Preparing for Your Athletic Scholarship Future

Unlike other sports, at this stage of the game top college basketball coaches at the top level programs are actively recruiting and even offering elite prospects. Some prospects are identified and evaluated as early as the 5th grade. There are media websites out there such as middleschoolelite.com that actually rank players at this young age! So if you aspire to play for a top program like a Duke, Kentucky, etc., and you haven’t been identified prior to your freshman year you need to take early action in the recruiting process.

One way to measure this is if you don’t get recruiting mail by the fall of your freshman year and you think you belong at one of the elite programs the right college coaches definitely aren’t aware of you and your best first step is to film a Highlight Video.

For more information on how to film skill videos by position click here.

Basketball Highlight Videos

Even if you get some initial mail, all advanced players should have a highlight video and send it to as many high level programs as possible to open up more options. Remember, you may dream of playing at Duke, and you may be good enough, but they may not recruit your position when you’re a senior or they might not offer you a great scholarship package. Elite youth players can really create options and leverage by getting in front of a lot of college coaches early on.

Viewership-Enabled Recruiting Video

The most common recruiting mistake basketball recruits make early on the process is that they don’t use video at all. Even if they do use video, many times they use the wrong video, or they send unsolicited links or DVDs and have no idea if it’s been watched by coaches. Or worst of all they start going to camps or tournaments without having sent viewership-enabled video in advance.

Don’t waste your time or money walking into camps and tournaments as an unknown commodity.

Once you have your skill video complete, the key is to submit your profile along with a viewership-enabled copy to college coaches. Viewership-enabled simply means that you’ll be notified once a college coach actually views your video. Sending any video or information to a college coach without being able to verify viewership is ultimately a waste of your time. You need to know once that video has been seen so you can follow up.

Here are tips for getting the most out of your video:

• Get viewership-enabled video out to coaches as a first step.
• Use these viewership-enabled skill videos to help determine which camps you attend.
• Communicate with coaches prior to their camp once you know they’ve watched it.
• Make sure coaches know you and the events you’ll attend each day prior to attending.
• Once you film your video you can add it to your profile for free here.
• Once you’ve built your profile and added your video, simply start selecting schools and sending out your information.