May 2012 College Recruiting e-Newsletter by CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com

What questions should I not ask a college coach? There are a lot of questions you should not ask a college coach, some, more obvious then others. Here are a few of the less obvious ones not to ask.

“Is this is a four year school or a two year school? What division do you play in? What conference are you in? Where is your school located?”

This is Jared Montz and you are reading the May 2012 free College Recruiting e-Newsletter by http://www.CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com.

Some experts suggest you ask these questions. In my opinion questions like these are questions you can easily answer yourself by doing some of what they call… Research! Go on a college’s website and find answers to easy questions like these yourself. In the business world they call this doing your due diligence.

Lets say the roles are reversed and a college coach that is interested in you is asking you questions. What would you think of a coach if they ask you questions like “What position do you play? What team do you play for? Do you bat left handed or right?”

What are you going to think about this coach? You are going to not think highly of her because she says she is interested in you and yet she doesn’t know a thing about you.

That is how they may feel about you. We don’t want that. We want them to be impressed by you. So instead of asking “What conference do you play in”. Find the answer yourself ahead of time and ask, “How do you like playing in Conference USA coach?”. This is an intelligent question, shows you know their program and will earn you points with the coach.

Be smart, do your research!

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Summer Time is a Good Time to Work on Recruiting!

With school being out in the summer you will have lots of free time to work on recruiting. Recruiting is like finding a job if no one knows you are looking you can’t get hired.

At CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com we help athletes get recruited. Below is a recent client testimonial.

“Hey Jared,

Sawyer Petre”

If you need recruiting help and would like to work with us please do not hesitate to contact me at 985-237-0763 or Jared@CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com.

Remember if you Believe in it® and back that up with hard work, anything in life is possible! That includes playing your sport in college!

Check out the “The Dominant One” Challenge at TheDominant1.com.

Pictured above is Kurt Hester, one of the brains behind TD1. Kurt was formerly the director of training at D1 Sports Training. CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com is the official college recruiting provider of D1 Sports Training. Kurt has trained thousands of high school and college athletes as well as hundreds of pro athletes and NFL stars. He trained Tim Tebow ahead of the NFL draft. Kurt is the man.

Kurt was my speed and strength coach from the age of 15 until the time I retired at 26. He made me so much stronger and faster. I was benching 250 coming out of high school as a 150 pound soccer player. I’m not bragging, I’m just giving you perspective on how smart Kurt is at training athletes.

His new company “The Dominant One” challenge is a 10 week training program that you buy. It includes performance training, nutrition education, community involvement and how to become dominant. It’s a competition too! The winner will receive a $50,000 college scholarship.

The TD1 challenge is available in all sports. If you are a high school athlete then I highly recommend you look into TD1 by clicking here.

Go Dominate!

A friend of mine, Jack Stewart, recently launched a website called CookingWithAthletes.com. The site is real recipes from real athletes. Athletes from all sports, not just soccer.

Jack is a pro soccer player and a former teammate of mine at the Chicago Fire. He’s a good player, great guy and we’ve cooked a few good meals at his house before so I’d personally recommend checking it out!

Full Disclosure: Part of the site is free and part of it requires a subscription. I am not receiving any affiliate fee for my recommendation, my recommendation is based on my friendship with Jack.

Guest writer Katy Stigers is the Head Coach for Women’s Soccer at Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, VA. The opinions expressed in this article are her own. Follow her at Twitter.com/CoachStigers or email her at KatyStigers@vic.edu.

In January the annual combine for professional men’s soccer players wrapped up in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. College football players who want to play in the NFL will have been preparing for the NFL combines ahead of the draft. The word “combine” comes from the harvesting machine used to remove crops from fields—it combines the work of harvesting, threshing, and winnowing the grain from the other parts of the plant. The sporting combines do the same thing—they gather together the players who are “ripe” for the next level and winnow or, separate, the exceptional players from the merely good.

This newsletter post is focusing on how you as a prospective college player can use a camp either this summer or a specialized mini-camp in the winter to help gain the attention of a program you are interested in. Camps are also a great chance for you as a prospective player and student to get to know a campus and its coaches better. I’ll give you three tips for each side of the process.

Three tips to help you stand out to coaches:

1. Make an effort to learn. You may be at the camp of a high profile school, and perhaps be eager to get an autograph or picture made with an important coach. Keep in mind that a great deal of recruiting leg work is done by assistant coaches. Also, the coaches will talk to one another during and after camp. You can get to know your coach by asking her or him questions about your position and about the sport. Remember who they are—in a few years that camp coach may be a head coach somewhere else—and they might remember you too.

2. Give 100% in everything. Coaches notice if you are talented. They also notice if do things half-heartedly or don’t pitch in. Those little things—jogging to your water break, anticipating the moves of your opponent rather than reacting, encouraging others, being competitive—do matter. Before camp make a game plan for yourself of how you will do the little things well—being on time, following the rules, maintaining a good attitude if you drop a pass or miss a shot and trying again right away. Keep track of yourself during the week. Don’t dwell on it if you make a mistake and are dragging a bit one session, just resolve to pick up the pace the next session. Have your roommate or a teammate be your accountability buddy and keep one another on track.

3. Another way of thinking about giving 100% is remembering to challenge yourself. When you choose a partner or take on an opponent, it is natural to want to look impressive. If you’re succeeding against one group, you may want to try and find an opponent who is going to be more of a challenge, so that you aren’t hiding where it’s safe but taking risks and showing your ability in a more difficult situation. The flip side is making good choices; while certain moves or decisions show flair, think about whether the best way to make your case to a potential coach is your ability to entertain or making the best choices on the field for your team.

Overall, these three tips are mostly focused on your mental game, rather than your athleticism or fitness—those are important too—but they are also the easiest way to winnow out the players who won’t be successful at the next level. These tips help coaches distinguish between the two.

Three tips to help you in your college search while at camp:

1. Notice the coaching style and personality of the coaches at the camp. Think about what type of coaching you are most likely to respond well to. Then you’ll have a source of comparison to use when you are making coaching visits. Talent id camps have become very common in some sports as a way for interested student-athletes to gain the attention of program and obtain what is essentially a try-out for the team—pay attention and use this opportunity to assess yourself honestly and figure out if you are at the right level of competition for yourself. Can you see yourself doing the same kind of training day-in-and-day-out against players as good as or better than the ones out there and for the coach running the session?

2. Think about the kind of campus you are on—is it in a rural area with historic buildings or a busy suburban campus with brand new buildings cropping up on every spot—what do you find appealing or unappealing? If it is an overnight camp, how do you like being away from home? It might be surprising how many students are really unhappy away from home their first semester in college, so sleep-over camps can be a great way to get a feel for your preferences.

3. Many camps are staffed with assistants who are current college players. They will probably be happy to tell you about their own campuses or other camps and campuses they have visited, as well as give you tips on how you can improve your game to get ready for the next level. Take advantage of their knowledge and expertise over meal times or water breaks.

A very important part of searching for a college, if you want to also play sports, is being able to identify your priorities. Attending camps can be a great way to figure out how important certain things will be for you in the future as well as give yourself a chance to imagine what the daily routine of college sports will be like.

Congrats to our client Trent Domingue for committing to kick/punt for the LSU Tigers! Trent worked really hard on his recruiting both on and off the field, he has the Believe in it® attitude and we are very proud of him.

Pictured above is Trent with LSU Head Coach Les Miles.

Congrats Trent, you deserve it!

Yesterday I was invited to attend the Mandeville Soccer Club signing day presentation for high school seniors that are signing a National Letter of Intent to play soccer in college.

I was very honored to be in attendance for the three girls above. Congratulations to Abby Schmidt, Kim Moreau and Elizabeth Manuel! All three will be attending the University of Louisiana Lafayette starting in the fall of 2012!

I have worked with all three girls the past few years on the soccer field and with their college recruiting. They have worked really hard and I am very proud of them!

Congrats!! Hard work pays off! Believe in it®!

Above is a shot of the opening events at the Godaddy.com bowl in Mobile, Alabama. Northern Illinois played Arkansas State this past Sunday evening.

My wife’s cousin, Zach Opsal, is a graduate assistant coach for the NIU Huskies and he got us the tickets. Thanks Zach!

It was a lot of fun!

NIU won the Godaddy.com bowl and capped off a great season that included winning the MAC conference!

Ouch! This is why it’s good to communicate clearly with your parents during the recruiting process and work together as a team. The last thing you want to do is what happened here on National television and now the Internet!

Credit to that reporter for asking the mother what she thought! LSU fans… they sure do love their tigers!

Happy New Year from the CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com team and I! 2011 was a great year and we’ve helped a lot of athletes develop their recruiting plans, build them them their own College Recruiting Websites and teach them the Believe in it® attitude! I’m excited for what 2012 will bring!

The pic above is was the second to last sunset of 2011. I took it on a bike ride in my town of Mandeville, Louisiana.

Remember if you Believe in it® and back that up with hard work, anything in life is possible! Happy New Year!

December 2011 College Recruiting e-Newsletter by CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas! The holidays are a great time to relax, take time off from school and your sport and enjoy being with your family. Of course, the presents are great too!

During the school year and your season you are very busy. I talk to athletes all the time about their recruiting and lots of times I hear the excuse “I’m so busy, I haven’t done anything yet, I just don’t have the time”.

Part of being a successful college recruit and athlete is using time management to accomplish all your goals. This holiday season you will a lot of time off from school and your sport so I propose you take the Holiday Recruiting Challenge!

This is Jared Montz and you are reading the December 2011 free College Recruiting e-Newsletter by http://www.CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com.

Holiday Recruiting Challenge
I want you to commit to spending 5 hours working on your college recruiting! Remember recruiting is like finding a job, if no one knows you are looking you won’t get hired!

Step 1 = 30 Minutes
Create two lists. Your first list is your Top 5 dream schools. The second list is 15-20 schools you would be happy to play at. These lists are your target lists of schools.

Step 2 = 2 Hours
Create contact sheets and save them on your computer for each college on your list. Your contact sheet should include the school name, website link, and coaches contact info. Then make a note for each time you have contact with them so you can keep track of the relationship with each school instead of relying on pure memory.

Step 3 = 2 Hours
Write a personal email to each school on your lists. Make it personal to the coach. Don’t send the same exact email to all schools at once. Let them know you are interested in their program and tell them a little about yourself.

Step 4 = 30 Minutes
Finish any miscellaneous recruiting tasks you may have and make a note on your calendar to follow up with the schools you don’t hear back from in a week or two.

For tips on writing emails, setting up contact sheets and using a calendar download a free copy of our College Recruiting Handbook by clicking here.

If you have already done a lot of the first stage recruiting work then I recommend you spend at least 5 hours reaching out to more colleges you are interested in, following up with ones you are currently talking too and complete any other pending recruiting tasks you may have.

Email me at Jared@CollegeRecruitingWebsite.com if you have any questions!

Are you going to take the Holiday Recruiting Challenge?

I’ll leave you with motivational quote by Thomas Jefferson. He says, “I’m a firm believer in luck but I find the harder I work, the luckier I get!”

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Remember if you Believe in it® and back that up with hard work, anything in life is possible! That includes playing your sport in college!