September College Recruiting Newsletter 2024

Welcome to the Kings Hammer September College Recruiting Newsletter! The club is excited to work with you to accomplish all of your player’s goals for this upcoming soccer year, on and off of the soccer field. Each month, we will be providing this resource to help you navigate the craziness that is the college recruiting process. We hope you find value in this newsletter and we are excited to assist in this exciting process for your family!

This month’s newsletter is going to focus on the SportsRecruits platform. Kings Hammer partners with SportsRecruits to make sure that our high school age group players have all the tools necessary to tackle their college recruiting process.

The first section of this article is provided by SportsRecruits as a welcome and initial guide to the platform. If you are new to Kings Hammer or you are a 2010 birth year athlete, you are going to want to read the full message and check out the resources linked throughout. If you have been with Kings Hammer, you may want to browse the article to ensure you are taking full advantage of the SR platform.

Welcome to SportsRecruits!

It is crucial to have an online presence where college coaches can find you, review your information, and evaluate you as a student-athlete in one place. Whether you are brand new to the platform, or you’ve been using the platform already, below are a ton of helpful resources the SportsRecruits team has shared with me to help you be successful in your recruiting process and make sure you get the most out of the platform.

To get started, you are required to watch the following video:

SportsRecruits Student-Athlete Training: It’s only 9 minutes and will walk you through all the features of your new profile.
For quick access, once you sign in, you can add your profile to your phone home screen, similar to other phone Apps

After you’ve gone through that quick video, I’ve outlined challenges below to help you get started. Keep in mind that your profile is an academic and athletic resume, and each challenge increases your discoverability or exposure to college coaches on the platform.

Sports Recruits Athlete Challenges

Once you have reviewed the SR videos, we have 4 S/R Challenges for you to complete. Getting through each of these will bring your account to life and provide you a great start on your recruiting journey. Here are the Challenges:

Challenge 1: Verify & Build Your Profile
Challenge 2: Get Video On Your Profile
Challenge 3: Build a List of Schools
Challenge 4: Introduce Yourself to College Coaches

Challenge 1: Verify & Build Your Profile

The verification process is 3 steps on your “Essentials” tab: 1) Upload a profile picture 2) Add your grad year and 3) Add your position(s)
Follow this article on Building Your Student-Athlete Profile and take 10 minutes to add as much academic and athletic info as you can when you first sign in.
Initial Kings Hammer accounts are setup using parent emails provided when athletes are registered through Playmetrics. Athletes are encouraged to change the Primary (Athlete) email to their own and add the Parent Email to their account.

WHY – Verified athlete profiles receive 2x more profile views from college coaches than athletes not verified.

Challenge 2: Get Video On Your Profile

You can Upload or Embed unlimited video to your profile.
To create a highlight reel(s):
- Use the In-Platform Highlight Reel Editor to clip your uploaded film into full reels or specific skills videos. Publish it once it is complete.
- Through your membership on the team, you have one FREE professional Highlight Reel credit, which includes isolation effects, title cards, and music.

WHY – College coaches can filter their Discover Feed by “Video” to show only athletes with video visible on their profile. Without video, college coaches cannot evaluate you as an athlete online.

Challenge 3: Build a List of Schools

Find schools using the Advanced School Search to filter schools by division, conference and college major to determine schools that are of interest to you. Click the heart icon to add the school to your Favorites List.
- The Roster Needs feature gives college coaches the option to publish the positions and academic credentials they are recruiting. You can use the Roster Needs filter to find schools that “Match” your position and grad year
  - How to Filter through Roster Needs
  - Note: Over 95% of Roster Needs require video to become a Full Match
You can stay organized by personalizing your favorites list as you start to reach out to these coaches. Building a list of 20-30 schools is a great place to start.

WHY – College coaches can search for prospective student-athletes using an “Interested in Us” filter to show only athletes who have favorited their school or sent their school a message on the platform.

Challenge 4: Introduce Yourself to College Coaches

Start using the messaging system to express interest in programs on your favorites list
- All messages are sent directly to the coach’s SportsRecruits account and personal school inbox: What Do Messages Look Like To College Coaches?
- Here are some ideas on how to introduce yourself: Sample Recruiting Email to a College Coach
Every message you send through the platform will include a link to your profile, which will give that coach direct access to this ‘online resume’
You’ll then be able to tell exactly which college coaches have viewed your profile with SportsRecruits’ complete transparency.

WHY –Reaching out to college coaches is the best way to share your profile and get on their radar. 80% of committed athletes contact at least 10 different schools over the course of their recruiting process. Get started with the schools on your favorites list!

Completing these challenges will set you up for success no matter where you are in the recruiting process, and it’s up to you to put in the work!

For more information, you can also learn some best practices in the SportsRecruits 101 Webinar (~25 min), in addition to the free recruiting webinars hosted each month by the SportsRecruits Team. All webinars are scheduled on the following page, and the recordings of previous webinars are at the bottom: SportsRecruits Webinar Landing Page.

Recent Kings Hammer College Commitments

Congratulations to the most recent Kings Hammer soccer players to make college commitment decisions! Remember to post your commitment to your Sports Recruits account, send a commitment photo to info@kingshammer.com, and include @kingshammer or tag Kings Hammer on any social media posts so that you can be recognized for your achievements!