Tip #3: When Can I Contact Coaches and When Can They Contact Me

All right, so far we’ve covered intangible qualities on the court that will separate you from the rest of the pack and the importance of academics. We have now built a foundation for you so that you can be in the best position possible to be recruited for a volleyball scholarship. So you’re probably asking yourself, what’s next? When do I actually begin this recruiting process? And what do I do?

Coaches recruiting for their volleyball programs have to follow a very strict set of NCAA rules. There are very specific dates and timelines in which they are allowed to approach you as an athlete and express their interest in you.

Here is a very simple breakdown of the main rules that college coaches have to follow when recruiting:

-Coaches are allowed to send out one standard letter in the mail expressing their interest in you and describing their program and university at anytime

-You as a player are allowed to contact the coaches through e-mail, letter, or phone at anytime

-September 1^st of your junior year of high school, coaches are officially allowed to e-mail you first

- July 1^st of your senior year of high school, coaches are officially allowed to call you first

Although the timeline varies a bit from player to player, I started receiving standard letters from college coaches in the mail my freshman and sophomore year of high school. This is the typical time frame in which these standard letters, or what my parents called “generic” letters, start coming in the mail. I remember the thrill of checking the mail everyday after school to see what colleges were interested in me. Receiving those standard letters of interest made me feel like my hard work over the years was finally paying off. I felt on top of the world. I felt wanted. College coaches were telling me that they were interested in me.

In all of the standard letters, the coaches had to cite the NCAA rule that states that they are not allowed to contact us first until September 1^st of our junior year of high school.

As I read all of my letters, I thought okay, I have 50 plus college volleyball programs that are expressing interest in me, so how do I show interest back? They told me that they were no longer allowed to contact me first, so the ball was now in my court. My parents were very helpful in this part of the process. They helped me develop a system.

At the end of each week, I would collect my letters from different colleges for the week and sit down at the computer on Sundays and respond to every school by sending the coaches a standard e-mail thanking them for their interest in me, introducing myself, naming my position, my club I played for, my high school, offering to send a highlight video of myself, offering to send my transcript of my grades, and opening the door to ask to come on an unofficial visit.

You have to understand that these coaches look at hundreds of volleyball players every time they go out to tournaments and recruit, and they send that same standard letter out to every player that piqued any sort of interest. Coaches often stand at tournaments, watch a good play, write down a player’s number, and then walk away to watch another court.

Now, this is not to diminish your athletic accomplishments nor is it to doubt their interest in you. I am just trying to illustrate the masses that these coaches deal with. So I will again, as I illustrated in my first blog, stress the importance of doing things to separate you from the rest of the pack.

I have heard so many stories of both close friends as well as mutual players who just sat back and expected coaches to beg them to come play for their program, and then they ended up having to scramble last minute to find a program to play for because they weren’t proactive in their recruiting process. And what I honestly have to say about those stories is that it was extremely foolish, and could have been easily avoided had they been more active and aggressive in putting themselves out there.

Now that the coaches have started to send their standard letters of interest to you, it is your job to show interest back. And it starts with a well-written and informative standard e-mail that shows you are interested in their program and what they have to offer, and I am going to walk you through the steps of how to write a well-written standard e-mail.