NCSA vs. SportsRecruits platforms?

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Aug 21, 2020
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For the more experienced softball parents that have gone through the recruiting process, I'd like to know what your experience has been with these platforms. My DD just entered high school this month and is playing up, so we are going to be seeing college coaches and showcases in a few weeks. She has expressed interest in playing in college and wanted to get start the process.

I see the value in having the free profile as a hub for videos, key stats, and academics, but are the premium functions like email tracking and coach viewing really worth it?

Thanks.
 
May 27, 2013
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113
Never used them. As far as email tracking and coach viewing, I would upload videos to YouTube and then set them to “unlisted” and my kids would add the link to the video in an email. As long as the coach received the link, they could see the video. Since I knew only the coach received the link, I could tell if the video was viewed by the coach by the number of views.
 
Jun 22, 2019
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We paid for the premium feildlevel membership because it let us know what coaches were viewing their profiles. They then contacted those coaches if they didn’t contact the girls first.

We only did it for a month or two because my girls didn’t decide to play college until the end of their sr. year, but it helped us get in contact with coaches that were interested.
 
Oct 1, 2014
2,218
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USA
We used SportsRecruits for my twins mainly because the cost of it was picked up by one of the orgs we played for in 16U and then also by a different org at 18's. I had looked at some of the other services/options at the time but this came along and we ran with it. YMMV but for us it worked very well and streamlined the whole process. Yes, you still need to provide the video, etc., but the search functions are good and it definitely seemed that there are a significant number of schools/coaches who use the program. Even a couple years later we'll still get a notification that some school is looking and no, we're not still paying the subscription for it!
 
Nov 5, 2014
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I never used NCSA but had a very good experience with Sportsrecruits. Big disclaimer I didn't pay for it. DD's high school subscribed for all student athletes.

Despite my positive experience I always tell people none of these platforms are necessary, it's just a tradeoff of time for money. The platforms are a time saving tool, nothing else. Everything you can do with them you can do on your own for free.

To give you a little more detail from Vertigo's excellent suggestion earlier. Create a Gmail account for your DD to use exclusively for recruiting. Make the address descriptive i.e. janedoe2026@gmail.com. Next create a YouTube page with this same Gmail account. Include key information in the description: name, class year, position, GPA, Test Scores, etc ..

You now have a choice to make. The easiest thing is just to upload videos to that page and send links to coaches in her emails to college coaches. There is a more time consuming but IMO superior way to go that Vertigo referenced. You can upload the videos as unlisted and send links to college coaches allowing you to track if they have been watched by coaches. To take it even further you can track the viewing to an individual school by uploading a separate copy of each video with a name unique to each school you contact. This way you will know exactly when, how often and how long that school viewed your video.
So for example I did a test of this for one of DD's teammates. I uploaded the same video to her YouTube page multiple times all set to unlisted each time I picked a unique name i.e. Jane Doe 2022 PGF Premier Nationals Highlights Dartmouth, Jane Doe 2022 PGF Premier Nationals Highlights Harvard, etc ..

This can be time consuming but we were now able to track the YouTube stats for each video with 100% certainty on who was watching and for how long.

IMO this is all you need for recruiting. Well this and a whole lot of organization, consistency, and persistence.

Edited to add: And camps. IMO the single most important part of the recruiting process
 
Last edited:
Nov 15, 2019
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I have heard numerous times that coaches don't like NCSA and parents have regretted spending their money there.

DD has sports recruits, it has always been paid for by the organizations she's played for. We like it a lot, it's very convenient to use and we love that all her info (videos, coaches contact numbers, test scores, transcripts, NCCAA eligibility number) is in one spot. We do not email through there though, we use her Gmail address and include the link to her sports recruits site. It's nice seeing which coaches are looking at her page, which videos they're watching, etc. But I'm not sure I'd pay $400 for it if our team wasn't covering the cost.
 
Sep 3, 2015
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Never used them. As far as email tracking and coach viewing, I would upload videos to YouTube and then set them to “unlisted” and my kids would add the link to the video in an email. As long as the coach received the link, they could see the video. Since I knew only the coach received the link, I could tell if the video was viewed by the coach by the number of views.

We did this also, seemed to work pretty well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Jun 19, 2020
83
18
We used NCSA and Sportsrecruits. NCSA was a waste of money, I don't recommend that option. Our travel org. used Sportsrecruits, and we had great success with it. NCSA could do so much more with what they have. Anyway if you want any more info let me know.
 
May 7, 2015
842
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SoCal
NCSA looks a lot better and I like the functionality more, but the bottom line is in DD's case, college coaches use Sports Recruits more. Out of 22 schools contacted, 21 interacted more frequently on SR. YMMV
 
Aug 21, 2020
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OP here, we had a follow up with our team’s recruiting coordinator who is also an assistant coach.

Same story use SR if the school pays for it, she never logs in or opens NCSA emails for her college, and unlisted YouTube links are your friend.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

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