Every year junior tennis players all around the world attempt to navigate the tennis recruiting landscape and achieve their dream of playing college tennis. This can be a daunting task for anyone but especially for a student-athlete who doesn't have the knowledge and expertise. There are so many questions that a tennis player will ponder. What is the difference between NCAA and NAIA? What is the difference from Division I to Division II or Division III? Are there advantages to playing NJCAA for a year or two and then transferring to a four year school? The most important question that prospective student-athletes should ask themselves is a recruiting service worth the money? All of these questions have merit and should be answered very early in the process but the recruiting service question and in essence how to start the process is by far the most important.
Recruiting services can have a great deal of value to the right person as long as you have the right perspective. Basically recruiting services typically offer a player the opportunity to market themselves to college coaches. The ultimate goal of the recruiting service is to obtain its clients athletic scholarships. Thats what they are getting paid for. Many of these services offer a whole suite of managed products to include video production, online profiles, contacting coaches, scholarship negotiation, and submitting of application and financial requirements. Wow thats a lot of assistance. Who wouldn't want to pay a service to handle all that for you? Are there any draw backs to using a recruiting service?
With anything there is always the good and the bad. Tennis recruiting services are no different. First of all, there is the cost of using a tennis recruiting service. When a company is managing your tennis marketing and your future as college tennis player your going to pay a pretty penny for that kind of service. Now there are tennis recruiting companies that offer many different levels of service from basic profiles to complete hands on management. A tennis player would expect to pay from several hundred to several thousand dollars. To some this maybe worth it if they receive a scholarship but there is no guarantee! Secondly, recruiting services usually have established relationships with certain schools and coaches but not every coach. This can be seen as a positive if they have a relationship with a school your interested in but often their relationships don't extend much farther than a particular division or conference. So if your considering using recruiting service it would be good to find out who they work with.
Finally, tennis recruiting services are largely gate keepers. What I mean by that is they are a middle man. In order to remain relevant they need to keep you from contacting coaches until near the end of the recruiting process. So basically the player is not very involved the selection process and are trusting the recruiting service to make this decision for them. This should raise a lot of questions for prospective student-athletes about the school, the tennis program, and the situation they are about to dive into.
As a former collegiate coach who has coached at every level of the NCAA. I had fruitful relationships with tennis recruiting services during my coaching career. I was pleased more often than not but I did notice some trends with players. I noticed that the players from recruiting services weren't as invested in the program as players whom I recruited personally. I also noticed I had a stronger initial bond with players I personally recruited than those from the recruiting services. Basically those student-athletes whom were involved from the very beginning displayed greater satisfaction with their school choice and were less likely to transfer after a year or two.
If there is anything to be learned from all of this its to be personally involved in the recruiting process. Do you want to take control of your tennis recruiting without the middle man mentality of recruiting service. Do you want all the benefits of tennis recruiting service without the hassles ? Then check out my app BreakPoint. I designed the app to empower the junior tennis player to take control of their college tennis destiny and eliminate the gatekeepers. Best of all, you can download, create a profile, and upload a highlight video for free.
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