College soccer season is incredibly busy, but recruiting never stops. Coaches want to hear from PSAs (Prospective Student Athletes). High schoolers ar
College soccer season is incredibly busy, but recruiting never stops. Coaches want to hear from PSAs (Prospective Student Athletes). High schoolers are always told to make their emails “personal,” “make it unique,” “show that you actually did some homework about that school or that team.”
HOW is that done?
“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”
In this article, you will be given a fish, but you will also be taught HOW to fish for the ingredients to put into your perfect recruiting email.
I am going to pretend that I am a very good 10th grade high school soccer player who is interested in the women’s soccer program at Arizona State University. (If you’re actually a PSA interested in ASU soccer, here’s your fish!) I already know a little bit about the school. I know I’m good enough to play NCAA DI soccer, and that’s my goal. The Tempe area seems cool, and they have a women’s soccer team. I know ASU offers a lot of different majors, but I’m not 100% sure they offer the major I want (for this exercise, I’ll pretend I am interested in Elementary Education).
FIRST STOP: GOOGLE
I Google “Arizona State Majors” and quickly find THIS page, and click on “undergraduate degrees.” I scroll down, and BINGO! Elementary Education! I bookmark this to save it for later, but for now, all I need to know is that they offer it. Now, when I email the coach, I won’t look like an idiot when I say, “I really want to study Elementary Education, and the program at ASU looks great.”
SECOND STOP: GOOGLE (yes, again)
Now that I have the “student” portion of “student athlete” done, I need to find out more about the women’s soccer team.
- Coaches’ names
- Coaches’ bios
- Team roster
- Team performance
This will be vital to sending an email that stands out. This time, I google “ASU women’s soccer.”
Notice that the websites in the google results are different than the academic ASU site. Most schools have a .com for the school and a different .com for the athletics department. At this athletics .com, I can quickly find the names and email addresses for the women’s soccer coaching staff. This page will have the most up-to-date contact info for coaches as well — unlike many recruiting services who don’t update their databases right away when a coaching change happens.
I find the names and email addresses for all of the coaches on THIS page. I open up my email, and I start composing an email that includes the top three coaches there (I don’t include the assistant athletic trainer who works with the wrestling team, too).
Coaches are VERY BUSY during soccer season, so I make sure to point out that my email won’t take a lot of time. My email’s subject line includes my name, MY GRAD YEAR, my position, and the fact that I play for a top league in the nation.
After that, I start poking around in their schedule on the ASU Sundevils website. I see that they’ve had some big wins and have some big games coming up. They beat SDSU in overtime. They have a tough game coming up against Oregon State. That’s all interesting, and the SDSU score might be good to bring up in the email. I dig deeper to learn more about the team so I can show the coaches that I really did invest time into learning about their program.
When I click on the main link for “W Soccer,” I can scroll down and see stories that ASU has posted about the team’s games and some about certain players. THIS STORY about Jazmarie Mader really stands out to me. I suffered a concussion earlier in high school, and the recovery taught me a lot. The story also shows me that the head coach is in his first year, emphasizes possession-style play, and plays with two forwards up top. PERFECT! I have lots of information to use in my email now. I go back to my email and start typing.
My email talks quickly about myself, and I include a link to my (SHORT) highlight video. I talk a bit about Jazmarie, since that really hit home for me.
I’m almost done with my email.
THIRD STOP: SOCIAL MEDIA
I need to wrap up my email with a good sign-off. Arizona State must have a “catch phrase.”
USC’s is “Fight On!”
University of Texas yells “HOOK ‘EM, Horns!”
I need to find ASU’s phrase, since I’m not quite sure what rabid Sundevils yell.
A quick google search for “ASU Sundevils Twitter” gets me HERE @thesundevils, and there it is.
#ForksUp !
I re-read my email to make sure it’s looking good.
I pointed out that I’ll be in Phoenix in November, and that I kick butt in ECNL.
My club coach’s name and cell phone number is in there, because I know NCAA rules don’t allow ASU coaches to contact me directly this year, but they can call my club coach!
I also noticed that on all of the ASU athletics sites, they call themselves “Sun Devil athletics,” not “Sundevils,” so I fix that little detail in my email. Little mistakes like that can stand out to some coaches. After a quick prayer, I click “SEND.”
Researching and composing that email took a bit of time, but not a whole lot.
So I had to give up a little time on SnapChat — it’s worth it to work towards my goal of college soccer!
