What if you only had 48 hours to make something happen in the college recruiting process, what would you do?

One of the biggest problems I see is procrastination on the part of both parents and student athletes.  What happens is that student athletes think that the college coaches are going to come to them first.  I believe it’s a big mistake to sit back and wait for something to happen.  Parents are also guilty of waiting to see what’s going to happen. Parents and student athletes must make something happen first.

Student athletes and parents both need to remember that college coaches don’t know who you are.  Once you begin to make a name for yourself at the high school level college coaches still may not know who you are athletically.

You only have 48 hours to make something happen with recruiting; what action are you going to take first in the recruiting process?

The first thing I would do is come up with a list of 100 college programs and write a one page handwritten letter to all 100 coaches.  This process may take several hours to write that many letters but if it’s a team effort of parents and student athlete working together it can get done.

The student athlete can write the letters and the parents can go on the Internet to look up the addresses to the 100 coaches.

Let’s say you had 25 DVD’s already produced and ready to mail.  You need to be very careful at this point on exactly who you’re going to mail these DVD’s to.

Because of the limited time, you may also think about emailing 100 coaches a brief description of what you can do athletically and of course academically.  If you have a link to other information about your athletic skills on the Internet, I would include that in the email.

If you have a copy of your high school transcript, I would include that when mailing the DVD’s to college coaches along with the handwritten letter.

We’re talking about 48 hours and you have to compile a huge amount of information in a limited amount of time.

Also have other family members to share in some of the responsibility.

The college recruiting process can be a tag team effort of family members working together to compile information to quickly get into the hands of college coaches.

Parents and student athletes: don’t sit back and wait for something to happen. Waiting for that phone call from that college coach or checking the mailbox every day for that recruiting letter believing that this will be the start of the recruiting process for you.

When you let weeks turn into months without actively pursuing college coaches, you put yourself in a situation where you may not have any time left to effectively reach college programs.

I’ve seen it happen too many times where the student athlete has reached their senior year and very little has been done with recruiting.  Now panic begins to set in and parents believe that maybe they’ve missed their opportunity to connect with a lot of college programs.

All is not lost in the recruiting process even if you have wasted months of time. With the 48 hour approach to recruiting, it is possible to compile a lot of information and get it out to the college coaches.

This fast break approach to the college recruiting process can happen anytime. You don’t have to be in your senior year to start a mass market approach to recruiting.

Some people may feel that 100 college programs might be too many but I would disagree. Why not plant many seeds now because you never know where the scholarship opportunity will come from.

The 48 hour strategy is simple if you just figure out where to begin and for those next two days just totally focus on recruiting and nothing else and you will be greatly surprised in your results.

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