How Long Should A Recruiting Video Be?
As a high school athlete who is seeking exposure to play collegiate athletics, a recruiting video is a crucial part of the process. Composing a short video that highlights all your best plays gives college coaches great insight into your ability as an athlete.
Your recruiting video should be anywhere from three to five minutes long and should display your best clips in the first thirty seconds. Coaches receive tons of highlight videos in a small period of time, therefore, the beginning of your video should be filled with the best content. This is the best way to ensure you will not be overlooked and is the most efficient way to show off your athletic ability.
While it first may feel uncomfortable to send out videos of yourself playing, this is a crucial part of the recruiting process. To ensure that your video is not looked over by coaches, we have composed some advice and strategies to make sure you are putting your best foot forward.
What Should I Put In My Recruiting Video?
Since you only have three to five minutes of space in your highlight video, you’ll want to be sure that it’s simple and free from any distractions that take away from showing off your athletic ability. You may have seen several different types of highlight videos and are unsure what to put in yours. Below is a list of some things you should consider putting in your highlight video.
Put Your Strengths First: Many athletes think they should put every possible skill on their highlight video. Realistically, this is a hard thing to do in a short amount of time so be sure to put only your best clips. You do not want to waste a coach’s time with non-essential video. High Quality: Don’t let a coach toss aside your video because the quality is bad or because you are difficult to see. Make sure that when you record your video the camera is positioned so that it is clear you are the main subject. Many times, coaches become confused as to who the athlete is in the video due to poor quality and bad filming.
Use A Spotlight: This is a technique that reveals to coaches where you are in the video so they don’t have to spend time searching for you. A spotlight can be edited in by implementing arrows, circles, or highlights. If you do decide to use a spotlight, make sure to not pause the video in the middle of a play or use slow-motion techniques. Keep the video consistently rolling. By using a spotlight, the coach's eyes will instantly be drawn to you and will not lose track of you during your video.
Include Your Contact Information: While this may seem obvious, many athletes fail to include this on their video because they assume the coach already has their contact information. If a coach has to go searching for your information, they are less likely to get back to you. You can add this information to the email that you also send your video with. You can also put your information at the very beginning of the video so they know where to find it.
If you follow these suggestions, you’ll be sure your highlight video will give you the best possible chance of getting on a coaches radar.
Things To Avoid In Your Recruiting Video
A highlight video is not a space to create a statement about yourself or anything else that distracts from your talent. Below are some things you should consider avoiding in your recruiting video.
Special Effects: Some athletes believe that adding special effects to their highlight video will increase the chances of their video being noticed by a college coach.. However, complex video techniques often have the opposite effect. Using complicated effects such as extreme transitions, crazy graphics, slow motion, sound effects, etc. add time to the video and take away from you.
Complexity: When coaches watch highlight videos they are not paying attention to the music or the cinematic techniques that are used. They just want to see what you are capable of. Keep your highlight video simple and easy to watch. Your clips should be playing back to back with nothing extra added.
Music: Coaches often mute the highlight videos they watch since they see many different videos with several different hype songs. Do not expect your music to hype up the coach, because in most cases, they aren’t even listening. If you do decide to put music in your video, steer away from using songs with suggestive and controversial lyrics. Many athletes make this mistake and are instantly looked over.
By keeping your highlight video free of these distractions, you’ll create a high quality video that will give a coach little reason to skip over your film.
Sending Your Highlight Video To Coaches
After you have created a short and concise video of your best plays, you should immediately email it to as many schools that you are interested in.
Post Your Video Online: The best way to share your video is by uploading it to your recruiting profile or uploading it to YouTube. By posting it online, you’ll be able to send a link to your video to all the schools you are interested in. Coaches are more likely to watch videos posted online because they can easily watch it either on their computer or phone. Wherever you chose to post it, make sure coaches won’t have to log in or sign up for a service to be able to see your video.
Email It To Coaches: You should email your video to as many programs that you are interested in because you never know what coaches may be looking for. The subject line should be Highlight Video or Recruiting Video followed by your name. You should also fill the body of the email introducing yourself in addition to giving a few facts about yourself. The link to your video should be easily seen and should send them straight to it so they don’t have to spend time searching for it.
Hearing Back From The Coach: After sending your highlight video, you may hear back from a coach within a week - depending on how busy they are. It is important to leave enough time for them to respond until you reach out again. Coaches get busy and forget to respond or maybe your email may have been looked over. If it’s been a few weeks since you’ve you’re your video out and you haven’t heard back yet, feel free to send a follow up. Sending a follow-up email increases your chance of hearing back from coaches and hearing their feedback.
Make Multiple Highlight Videos: Coaches want to see that recruits are making progress within your highlight films. Making videos after every major tournament, meet, game etc. is a great way to do this, as this shows coaches how you are growing as an athlete. Many coaches that recruit athletes very early on in their high school career, require that film be sent continually.
It can be scary to send video clips of you playing to coaches you don’t know. Remember, most if not all, collegiate athletes have had to create a recruiting video and email it to coaches. It’s all just a normal part of the process.
Things To Keep In Mind
Keep It Short: If you keep your video short, the odds of you hearing a response from the coach is very high. Long and complex highlight videos are an easy way to be looked over and you don’t want that to be the reason a coach passes you by.
Communicate: Sometimes you may not hear back from the coaches that you have emailed and that is okay! Coaches cannot respond to every athlete that contacts them simply because they hear from so many. If you are set on a program that you have not heard a response from yet, stay resilient and keep sending them your videos. If a coach keeps seeing your name pop up in their email, they will respond.
Be Receptive To Feedback: A coach may respond and tell you they are not interested. However, the best athletes can hear critical feedback and learn from it. Coaches appreciate athletes who don’t get offended after hearing critical feedback. While it may feel uncomfortable, know that this is a huge part of being a collegiate athlete.