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Nothing But Net: How To Sink Your College Basketball Recruiting Video

If you play for a high school basketball team and have ambitions to play in college, you'll need to make sure that you're noticed during recruiting. Despite the media portrayals of recruiters flocking to players every year, most high school basketball players will have to reach out to college coaches directly if they hope to secure a scholarship of any kind.  The best way to do this is by creating a recruiting video that clearly shows your talents. Here are some tips to produce a solid video that is sure to get you noticed.

What Should the Video Include?

Knowing what to spotlight in your video can be as difficult as deciding who you're going to send it to. Keep in mind that coaches want to see all of your talents and abilities. Include clips of your workouts, scenes from practice, clips of some of your strongest games and anything else that you think illustrates why the coach should want you on the team or what you will bring to the team.

How Long Should the Video Be?

Keep in mind that college recruiters are busy, and the shorter your video, the better. The key is to balance brevity with detail. Aim for a video that's only a couple of minutes long so that the recruiter can see your skills quickly. The recruiter will know within a couple of minutes whether he wants to see more of your talents. If so, he or she can always ask you for more footage or come to see you. Just make sure that there's no wasted time – focus on your abilities, actions and plays.

Remember the Vital Information

The opening and closing screens of your video should include an overview of your essential statistics. Show your full name, the position you play and when you graduate. Add the name of the school you attend and what city and state it is located in. Then, you'll want to add your current GPA and your SAT scores if you have them. This allows the coach to tell at a glance if you'll academically qualify for the team.

If you're sending DVDs to recruiters, label them clearly so that he or she will know at a glance who the disk belongs to. Include not only your name, but also your phone number, jersey number and the color of the jersey you're wearing in the game clips. That makes it easy for the recruiter to not only identify you in the video, but also to call you without having to track down your contact information from playing the video again.

Go Digital

Instead of sending out DVDs to the recruiting teams, consider creating a video channel on a video-sharing website. Publish video clips of each of your key skills. This may allow you to showcase your abilities with more clips for each skill, and the recruiter can then evaluate them accordingly.

Call the recruiters directly, then follow up the phone conversation with an email and a link to your online videos. The phone call is important, though, because it puts your name in the forefront of the recruiter's mind when you send the video link.

If you want to land a scholarship on a quality college basketball team, you need to make sure that your recruiting video shows the best of your abilities. With these tips, you can create a video that will help you get the attention of places like Hoops4Nations, coaches and essential personnel at the local colleges.


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