Captain U site for recruiting.

[smash]

I am trying to get information regarding the "Captain U" site for recruiting. Is it worth purchasing monthly or is it a waste of time? It seems to make things a little easier.

[ECSB]

Hi - my DD had to sign up as part of a showcase she went to. They used "Captain U" instead of profile books. Here is my opinion - it is not worth it if you know what schools your kid is interested in. Also, with this showcase, we got a free trial of some of the features. It would write the email to the coach for you. I am not sure where the email comes from - captainU.com? I just had my kid write her own email from her own email address - coaches know if the kid wrote it themselves. I don't think any of these "online profile" things help - but that is just my opinion. I don't know if coaches search it or anything - have not gotten any emails from coaches from it!

[smash]

Thank You for the input and I kind of felt the same way. It seems like it would be better for the E-mail to come from the player to the college coach. This site makes it quick and easy but probably not to impresive.

[Coach11]

I am trying to get information regarding the "Captain U" site for recruiting. Is it worth purchasing monthly or is it a waste of time? It seems to make things a little easier.

Not sure smash.....daughter playing with a new team this season and they recomended we go the "Captain U" route....She's just a sophomore, so I'm not sure how much help it will be at this time.

I'll touch base if I see any real pluses or minuses.

[kidcoach5]

We also recieved it as part of a showcase. It seems to be alright , it expired before we really got to try it out. I only have the basic profile. It did not seem wortht he$ 40.00 a month. It did provide examples of emails to be sent. I believe it had the emails of the attending colleges for the showcase.

[whatever]

DD received her free trial of this - and it does help you easily write the college coaches through their website. Here's what I found. Just for the heck of it checked the college website to verify the coach she was writing to. Well found out that Captain U had her writing to a coach who had left that summer and was replaced with a new one in June/July (this was Fall tourney_! So not worth the money to me - if she is interested in certain schools - I'd make darn sure of the coaching staff and not rely on someone else.

[3Bsnag]

Not trying to slight CaptainU in any way, I'm not familiar with their services.

We use softballshowcase.com and really like it. I don't think it has email writing capability, but we love having everything in one place- pics, video, stats, news, etc. It's super easy to navigate and update. Fee's are $10 a month or $50 for 6 mos, and I do get to see what colleges have visited her profile and a general chart of what positions college coaches are searching. They also have an extremely prompt and friendly customer service dept.

Not affiliated, just experience with them. Whether it helps with her recruiting or not, who knows. It can't hurt.

[Sftbll4ever]

Not trying to slight CaptainU in any way, I'm not familiar with their services.

We use softballshowcase.com and really like it. I don't think it has email writing capability, but we love having everything in one place- pics, video, stats, news, etc. It's super easy to navigate and update. Fee's are $10 a month or $50 for 6 mos, and I do get to see what colleges have visited her profile and a general chart of what positions college coaches are searching. They also have an extremely prompt and friendly customer service dept.

Not affiliated, just experience with them. Whether it helps with her recruiting or not, who knows. It can't hurt.

That is funny!!! When I tried to find them to cancel my dd's subscription, they were no where to be found. Finally ended up having to call my bank and deny payment to them.

Although, they were pretty good. If I had needed it for my younger dd, I would use them.

[3Bsnag]

Not trying to slight CaptainU in any way, I'm not familiar with their services.

We use softballshowcase.com and really like it. I don't think it has email writing capability, but we love having everything in one place- pics, video, stats, news, etc. It's super easy to navigate and update. Fee's are $10 a month or $50 for 6 mos, and I do get to see what colleges have visited her profile and a general chart of what positions college coaches are searching. They also have an extremely prompt and friendly customer service dept.

Not affiliated, just experience with them. Whether it helps with her recruiting or not, who knows. It can't hurt.

That is funny!!! When I tried to find them to cancel my dd's subscription, they were no where to be found. Finally ended up having to call my bank and deny payment to them.

Although, they were pretty good. If I had needed it for my younger dd, I would use them.

Yeah, I guess you never know. I've only had to deal with them a few times, but once I sent an email, almost 1am, and figured I'd hear something within a couple of days. Got a response back within 10 minutes. Had a payment issue too, that they more than generously fixed. I guess the point is... don't ever cancel!!

[captainu]

Thanks everyone for your input on CaptainU. We're working very hard to make great web-based software that makes recruiting easy for players. Constructive criticism stings sometimes because we put so much into CaptainU, but believe me, it's very, very helpful. I wanted to weigh in a couple of the questions/concerns that were raised:

A concern was raised around a college coach who was no longer at the school where we had them listed. First, can you please let me know who it was so I can make sure that it's fixed? More importantly, we're constantly managing a contact database of about 15,000 coaches. The coaching world is constantly in flux, and we're well aware of that. To that end, we've developed a very effective way to continually refresh our database. Every few months, the entire database gets double, triple, and quadruple checked. Inevitably, we get a few wrong. When that happens, our members typically point it out and we fix it within a few hours.

There was some discussion around the actual emails that get sent. To be clear, we don't "write" emails for any players. In fact, we know that this would be a bad idea. I used to be a college coach at the University of Chicago and I know that coaches want to hear from kids, not third parties. Instead, we provide kids with outlines that give players an idea of what they should say. Then they have to take that advice and put it into their own words. Finally, messages that college coaches get from CaptainU athletes arrive in coaches' normal inboxes and look like normal emails. We don't put ANY CaptainU branding on them. For coaches, it looks, feels, and IS a direct message from the player -- with no intermediary nonsense.

CaptainU is all about making it easy for players to market themselves to college coaches. In fact, I wrote a 130-page book called Make the Team that teaches our approach. Please download a free copy by clicking this link http://s3.amazonaws.com/images.captainu.com/assets/241/Make_the_Team_eBook.pdf

Thanks everyone for weighing in. Feel free to drop me a line avi [at] captainu.com.

- Avi, CaptainU CEO