Video Tips on Strategically Showcasing College Prospective Student-Athlete

By Tom Kovic

College coaches create individual filtering systems in order to organize the volume of inquiries they receive from prospective student-athletes into either “active or inactive” recruiting files. Developing an effective and streamlined recruiting video that makes the job of skill evaluation by a college coach an easy one, is the first step in showcasing a prospect effectively.

The recruiting video offers first impressions of a prospect and a great tool to impress coach with your skill set. Typically, a college coach will roughly evaluate a recruit within the first 2 minutes of the video. They need to! Along with the volume of profiles college coaches receive, they are being bombarded with hundreds of videos. Therefore, your best strategy is to present a video that demonstrates your skill as an athlete and in an efficient and streamlined format.
Make your video succinct, professional, and attention grabbing. Follow these guidelines:

• Introduction: Tell coaches who you are, where you are from, year of graduation and the name of your high school or club team. Show confidence and project a mature image.
• Keep your highlight video to 5 minutes of your finest competition and training highlights.
• Finish your video with 10 seconds of “contact information.” Include your club/high school coach’s name and direct e-mail address and phone number(s).
• Digital quality with strong zoom capability is best.
• Provide coaches with (3) training video updates spread out over the summer to show your new skill progress.
• Offer coaches “quarterly video updates” throughout the competition season to demonstrate your progress.
• Once your video is complete, upload it to your YouTube cannel or personal website and share the link with the college coaches.

High quality videography will provide the college coaches on your list with the opportunity to do a snapshot and/or in-depth athletic evaluation and determine where you initially stand as a prospect. The final product should be crisp, clean, and concise and polished to perfection. Provide the coaches with regular video updates and give them every reason to filter your information into the active recruit file.

Tom Kovic is a former 19 year college gymnastics coach at The University of Pennsylvania and the current President of Victory Collegiate Consulting, where he provides individual advisement for families on college recruiting.