The Importance of Highlight Videos in The College Sports Recruitment Process

College coaches dedicate a lot of time to travel the country to watch aspiring college athletes showcase their skills, however it’s impossible to see everyone. Luckily, highlight videos are the next best thing for coaches to look at when they can’t get to 10 different states in one weekend. Recruitment highlight tapes have been around for quite some time, however over the past few years the quality has reached new heights with the invention of Veo amongst other services.

To be seen by college coaches, creating a well produced highlight video is part of the game. Just like sending letters of interests and taking entrance exams, videos are now part of the package. Aside from it being expected by many college coaches now, there’s other reasons why it’s important to invest in if you’re serious about the college recruitment process.

Like a resume, you will likely use it multiple times.

Once you make one highlight video, you will most likely repurpose it and send it out to several different schools. Although the introduction paragraph in the email including the video will vary, once you have one skills and highlight video you don’t need to worry about making one for each individual school.

Watching your own game is great practice for college athletics.

Video sessions are part of almost every weekly schedule in college athletics. By immersing yourself in watching your own game, the good and the bad, you will be better prepared for video sessions in college when every pass, goal, transition is taped and critiqued. When you are putting together your highlight tape, focus on the big moments that showcase your talent. Watch all of your game film and pull out the moments that you are the most proud of.

Figure out your player identity.

What kind of player are you? How would you describe your game? These are some of the questions college coaches may ask during recruitment. By watching your own game, try and piece your player identity together. When your video gets sent out to these schools, you want the coaches to be able to see that. Most coaches want players who have an identiy; whether that’s fierce and a big moment player or calm, cool and collected. Use your own film to figure out who you are and let that shine through.

Time and reach.

A sports highlight video allows players the chance to get seen by coaches all over the country. If you have dreams of playing on the other side of the country, it is very unlikely that coaches from those schools can get to your games. This where the importance of videos comes into play. As a player, you can send your video to any college coach, near or far, and they won’t have to travel hundreds of miles to see you play. Creating a video like this saves coaches time and allows you to reach colleges you may never have had the chance to if you were relying on the coaches to come see you play.

Now that you have learned some of the reasons why video plays an important role in recruiting, you may be wondering, how do I make one?

Video editing can be tricky, but thankfully TeamSnap has teamed up with Next College Student Athlete (NCSA) to help you through the recruitment journey. NCSA offers comprehensive recruiting tools to help you through the college recruiting process that is completely customized to you. For more information or to take advantage of NCSA’s great resources, click here! NCSA has a complete guide to creating a top notch recruitment video.