Using Video to Showcase College Prospective Student-Athletes
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 yet 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.
- The first 2 minutes of your video should be captivating and highlight outstanding moments and technical mastery of talent and your position. This will grab the coach’s attention.
- Keep your highlight video to 5 minutes of your finest games 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).
- Certain sports (lacrosse, soccer, football, field hockey) will require at least half field footage, rather than close-up shots
- Digital quality with strong zoom capability is best.
- Certain sports require a “full game” video.
- Once your video is complete, upload it to your YouTube cannel or website and share the link with the college coaches.
Quality Counts
You want to avoid “Hollywood bells and whistles” when you create the recruiting video and avoid any remote distractions. That aside, the quality of the video should directly reflect the impression you want to make with the college coaches you are trying to impress.
Perlow Productions (www.perlowproductions.com), headquartered near Philadelphia is a video production company that works with aspiring student-athletes around the country who need a high quality recruiting video to take their college search to the next level. The aim of the video is create excitement and draw attention to the prospect and Perlow does not disappoint!
Founder and President Mike Perlow manages each client video production and with nearly two decades of experience as a TV sportscaster in markets from Florida to Boston, he has developed skills at every level of the industry. From videography and editing to writing and on camera performance and interviewing, your end product will be 5 star.
Viewers will see, feel, hear and experience what the student-athlete brings to the field of play. Perlow Productions can work with your team’s existing footage or have their experienced sports videographers shoot games, training sessions and more in order to produce the perfect video.
Below are examples of college recruiting videos produced by Perlow Productions:
Girls lacrosse: https://perlowproductions.com/video/high-school-girls-lacrosse-recruiting-video/
Boys lacrosse: https://perlowproductions.com/video/recruiting-video-boys-high-school-lacrosse/
High quality videography will provide the coaches on your list with the opportunity to do a snapshot 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. For further information visit: www.victoryrecruiting.com.