Lazy Recruiting by College Coaches

I think you should hand out the forms to the seniors, maybe one would want to see that someone is interested (even if they arent mentioned by name)

Let your runners decide whether or not the recruiting is stupid

Spamwich wrote:

I am a high school coach.

In the past week alone, I have received 2 letters and 2 emails from different colleges (all 4 were Division 3) with some of the laziest recruiting tactics I've seen. They basically send a form letter with information about the college, the facilities, the XC program, and ends with asking me to send them the names of my athletes who might be interested, or asks me to hand out a stack of brochures to my seniors. Literally 100% of those handouts go into the trashcan. When I ask for who's interested, it's always no one.

Here's what works- personalize an email or letter to each kid. Even if it's still a form letter, put their name on it and mention a couple of their accomplishments that interested you.

Please stop the lazy recruiting.

There are restrictions in what you can and cannot send to a PSA depending on the time of year and what grade the kid is. I wouldn't be so quick to judge these coaches, if you had a student athlete that was talented enough to warrant more attention, then you'd see a little more effort I'd imagine. It certainly doesn't help that you present these brochures as trash with a, "who's interested?!" That's just a lazy presentation in my opinion.

I'm a D3 coach. We send those letters to you and 1,000 other coaches. Its just fishing. Finding a kid who is athletically--and more importantly academically (for many of us)--fitting is the needle in the haystack dilemma.

If you think your kid who is Division 3-level talent needs to be personally targeted from the first contact you are expecting WAY too much. They are not blue-chip kids.

How about you just make the kid aware that this school might be a possible fit for them and tell them they should follow up?

I hope you are aware that many DIII coaches are coaching three seasons, getting paid peanuts for the amount of work they do, and getting pressured from administration to recruit. I hope you are aware that with high costs and no athletic scholarships DIII schools have a difficult time selling themselves. Sometimes they act like the coaches should be compensating for this. These coaches are trying to be efficient since they probably don't have the time and money to be any other way.

I think you misinterpreted my role. I present the information and try to sell it; kids just aren’t interested because it’s addressed to the twenty seniors in the room.

I’m also not the one trashing the information. I’ve just observed that at the end of the team meeting almost every brochure ends up in the waste basket.

Yes, I do think more effort can be made. One of the schools who did this is located within 10 miles of the high school. That coach can certainly recruit the local schools better.

I understand the fishing technique from the schools that are 1500 miles away. They take a shotgun blast at a ton of kids and hope they nail one. I get that. I just think they’d have better success focusing their efforts and zeroing in on less kids but with more interest. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve sent a lot more kids to D1 than to D3 because my D3 caliber kids, which I have many more of, just don’t ever feel like anyone’s interested in them.

What we like to do is ask for contact information of each student instead of sending brochures. At this point we can contact them individually, find out if they have any friends on the team who are seniors and sell them on that point. Seems more individualized and is a private conversation instead of announcing it to the whole team. Let’s us do the recruiting, your job is to put your students in the best position to advance themselves not pick and choose for them. I can’t stand high school coaches who do not try to help th students who have an opportunity to go somewhere that might be an awesome fit

Spamwich wrote:

I am a high school coach.

In the past week alone, I have received 2 letters and 2 emails from different colleges (all 4 were Division 3) with some of the laziest recruiting tactics I've seen. They basically send a form letter with information about the college, the facilities, the XC program, and ends with asking me to send them the names of my athletes who might be interested, or asks me to hand out a stack of brochures to my seniors. Literally 100% of those handouts go into the trashcan. When I ask for who's interested, it's always no one.

Here's what works- personalize an email or letter to each kid. Even if it's still a form letter, put their name on it and mention a couple of their accomplishments that interested you.

Please stop the lazy recruiting.

I can understand your view point that this appears lazy and in all honesty, this is the easier, lazier approach to recruiting. At the same time, part of the reason they aren't asking you about only specific students is that they trust you know your students better than they do and they genuinely are open to talking with almost anyone on your team. They're hoping that you might read the college information and be able to suggest some students who you feel might be good fits for that school so you they can then reach out individually to those kids and get to know them better. Most DIII's don't have roster caps, so while they'd like to recruit fast kids, they have room to take slow kids too who might later develop into conference level runners over time, so they don't want to rule out those slower runners who might also be good fits for their school academically. Without talking to you first, the college coaches at the DIII level have very little information to use to target these specific athletes other than just their times which all qualify to make their team and doesn't cut down on the number of athletes they're interested in.

Part of the problem is most of d3 isnt a great academic fit for many students. Most of the schools that are decent academically are very expensive private schools. I've heard the "we have great aid, so it is the same cost as an average in state university" line too many times.

I do hand on these brochures, but I'm not going to try to sell a kid on an expensive school just so they can run. Many of them are already going to big D1 schools, so I encourage them to join the club team at that school.

Generally the kids who arent academically gifted enough to go to the UCLA, Cal, UW madison type of schools and too slow for dI would be better off price-wise at a school like Chico, Humboldt state, etc than a D3 school as well.

D3 coaches are in a tough spot, recruiting-wise. Some are public schools, so a reasonable pricr. But so many are expensive private schools, it is hard to imagine it being a great fit for very many kids.

You don't belong in coaching, "coach."

I remember getting a couple of those form letters from schools when I was a freshman and it was a HUGE boost to my confidence. Sure they sent it to hundreds of runners, but it showed what I was doing meant SOMETHING to SOMEBODY.

Get the letters to the kids and make it out like it's a good thing. Don't be a d!ck.

Most college coaches do not spend much time recruiting. The focus seems to be D3 but D1 coaches are terrible also. You have seen the posts on here about 9:10 guys getting snubbed but then seeing 9:20 guys make the team. It is not because the coaches have done a thorough analysis of the long term upside of the runners, it more often that the coaches just let things sort of happen around them.

Well, the really lazy coaches just contact their overseas connection and have them send them an accomplished older stud. Then they they pretend they developed the talent when it really bought.

While, I don't think what those coaches are doing is a total waste, I have found from personal experience it certainly is ineffective and . Our program previously had a very "people will come to our school because it's the right school for them" and just waited to see who was interested in us, and these letters are a pretty similar approach. The letter takes a slight step farther by actually providing kids with information about the school, but unless they're really interested in some specific program at the school most people don't sit down and just read pamphlets.

Our program has EXPLODED in the last 3 years. For men's and women's XC and track combined we have had over 30 incoming student athletes the last 3 years (freshmen and some transfers. 4 years ago we had 43 total athletes). This isn't an accident. We don't just shoot out information and hope that someone will bite, but we also don't sit down and research and personally contact the thousands of kids who could impact our team from the state of Virginia. We want people to know who we are and what we're doing so we go out and actually meet people. Our recruiting is super coach based. Coaches know the personalities and strengths of their athletes, so we talk to them about what we have and who will fit with us. We go to as many high school meets as we can make it to, and we talk to the coaches at just about every good program, about who we are, the progress we've made, and which of their kids we've noticed. It's all building relationships on multiple levels.

It's one thing for me to send you a form letter and say this is what we are and what we're looking for, but it's a completely different thing to come see you at a meaningful competition, explain why I'm interested in your program, and tell you what my program can do for you athletes. People don't get to know form letters, but they have gotten to know our program and that has caused them to champion our recruiting. Coaches and athletes from schools we haven't talked to before know who we are and are looking at us by reputation of those we have recruited from.

If you're a D3 coach and you're not getting out to see kids race, and meet as many HS coaches from your target areas as possible, you're getting left in the dust.

I'm a D-3 Coach- as a matter of self-protection- please urge your athlete to go Division II- as I don't want there to be any chance of me coaching a man mentored by a turd like yourself.

ataglance wrote:

I remember getting a couple of those form letters from schools when I was a freshman and it was a HUGE boost to my confidence. Sure they sent it to hundreds of runners, but it showed what I was doing meant SOMETHING to SOMEBODY.

Get the letters to the kids and make it out like it's a good thing. Don't be a d!ck.

Same here. At best they would have my name printed on the outside of the letter, but it at least made me feel like continuing my running collegiately was possible. A coach should at least open their kids minds to those possibilities, anything less is doing them a disservice.

I am a little confused by the hostility towards this HS coach from some of you D3 coaches and malmo. To me, it sounds like he is looking out for his athletes and just saying that D3 recruiting could be better, in his experience. Am I missing something? Maybe D3 level HS recruits aren't superstars, but aren't D3 coaches trying to get kids that will be able to score for them at meets (or does this truly not matter much?) Reaching out to that 11:30 3200 girl instead of just throwing a general recruiting email/letter out there might actually land you the 11:30 girl instead of a few 13:30 girls. Going to a meet or two and introducing yourself to coaches and kids might pay off too. I know that I am a lot more impressed with a D3 coach who actually comes to a meet and/or sends a literate email naming the kids they are interested in than a general blast with little info in it. We got an email recently recruiting some of our third/fourth tier senior cross country kids. Weird thing was that he named one of my girls who is a 23 min 5K girl but a very low 26 second 200 meter girl...and they wanted her for cross (no track team at the college). Clearly he was not very familiar with the athlete, but I at least give him credit for mentioning kids by name!

[quote]pnjfoley wrote:

[quote]ataglance wrote:

I remember getting a couple of those form letters from schools when I was a freshman and it was a HUGE boost to my confidence. Sure they sent it to hundreds of runners, but it showed what I was doing meant SOMETHING to SOMEBODY.

+1 My son, a good but not elite runner, opened every recruiting letter he got and went online to look up every school that contacted him. Personal interest means a lot to kids.

Another D3 coach here- this subject has been hinted at in some of the other posts but I feel the need to clarify: recruiting is extremely time consuming. If you look at all the functions that go into coaching- the actual practices, meeting with athletes, administrative duties, academic obligations- there isn't a ton of time left over, even though recruiting is an important function of getting new runners and student athletes. Most programs don't have the resources to be able to individually reach out to every athlete that they find intriguing and even then, it would be hard to identify which ones to specifically focus on. Hence why most college coaches send out form letters, or in some cases, reach out individually to coaches about athletes that would be interested- because the high school coach generally knows his or her athletes best and will be able to pass along those who would actually be interested in running college.

I would imagine an average D3 college coach puts in 50-60 hours a week of work and is compensated pretty poorly for it as is, trying to individually contact every recruit or write a personal letter just isn't the best use of time for most coaches. Granted, my program is a program with a wealth of resources and coaches so thankfully we have the manpower to attend meets/ write personalized letters/etc but we are definitely one of the few able to accomplish this.

Just wanted to provide the perspective so high school coaches like the OP can understand that its not exactly laziness but more so trying to do as much as you can with the limited time/manpower/resources as you have to recruit.

Thats not even to mention the money issue as well- since D3 schools don't have athletic scholarships, it can also be difficult attempting to "cold recruit" since you don't have the $ incentive that D1 schools or NAIA schools may be able to offer. Certainly there are more issues we could touch upon and I'm not excusing every coach from being lazy but I can certainly say when it comes to recruiting, it can be pretty challenging for most programs to have "quality" recruiting with the lack of resources available.

ataglance wrote:

I remember getting a couple of those form letters from schools when I was a freshman and it was a HUGE boost to my confidence. Sure they sent it to hundreds of runners, but it showed what I was doing meant SOMETHING to SOMEBODY.

Get the letters to the kids and make it out like it's a good thing. Don't be a d!ck.

The letters haven't been addressed to the kids. They are addressed to me. It's a single letter asking me to tell the kids about their program and then provide names of interested athletes. So, I do what I can to inform them about the school based on the letter, but I have nothing to give the kids unless the brochures are sent with it, which was one of the cases this week. The brochures seem to end up in the trash, like I said, when the kids throw them away.