Recruiting Videos...What's The Deal?

[Els489]

Is it me or do most recruiting videos all seem the same? Well produced, but only show edited plays/hits. Pitching from coaches, therefore not real game situations with real pitchers and slow ground balls to the fielders.

What are college coaches really looking for, because these videos all make the players seem pretty decent.

Am I missing something? If I was a coach I would rather see less edited real game video.

Please educate me!

[PairOfAces]

Game footage of the same quality as a recruiting video is probably pretty hard to come by. I think what you can see on the professional videos is form and technique and mechanics. Shows the potential coach what they have to work with.

[Marriard]

There are lots of terrible, terrible videos out there. So they are not all the same - and even some of the professionally produced ones are total garbage because they often use the same template for everyone (though sometimes they are works of art - just not works of softball). For coaches they can be invaluable even if the look similar.

Having looked (and made) way too many of these, I will say coaches are using the videos primarily to make sure what the player says she is in her emails match up with what she sees in the video. You also can't hide a bad swing, or slow pitching or terrible mechanics or lack of throwing form or total lack of athletic ability. None of these disqualify you from playing college ball - but they will certainly help the coaches decide if you are someone who can or cannot play for their team at their level and if they want to have a closer look. I know I can tell from a video whether a player is worth a live look or not.

A good video tells a college coach who you are and what you will bring to their program day one within 60 seconds. For example - first thing on a slappers video should be them running the bases - you want to show elite speed... if you are riseball pitcher throw that one FIRST....and so on. Don't need music or fancy editing - cell phone video is good enough these days. You can do it yourself easily. 3 minutes max for a fielder or a pitch-and-sit pitcher - 5 for a pitcher who hits or a catcher (or two videos if you like).

BTW - I have seen all sorts of dumb things in these videos. I saw a pitchers video where everyone walking in the background looked like they were running (they did a poor job of speeding up the video to pretend she had more speed). One I saw a girl bunt a ball into her nose and start bleeding (yes they left that in). I saw video of a hitter who was on a t-ball field with a fence that CLEARLY had 120' marked on it (because those t-ball home runs are shots).

I have seen outfielders drop routine fly balls. Or only show easy catches... seriously I expect that you can catch a ball hit right to you 0 stretch yourself a bit.

I have seen a video which included the girl run around the bases in what was 25 seconds.

One video was shot from so far away you couldn't make out the player on video. One so close you never saw the girls legs on many skills.

One girl TALKED for 8 minutes. Yes... 8 minutes... then there were 20 minutes of bad hitting and fielding. I think that was the record for length.

One video the girl was only wearing volleyball shorts and a sports bra.... seriously... and she sent a new one each year which was exactly the same. Classy!

The great news is that YouTube exists. We used to get VHS tapes in the mail.

[E Train Dad]

When my DD was being recruited, I videoed her at bats through the fence from my Iphone and had her send the hits' to the coaches she was interested in.....that is what works! Coaches could care less about quality, they want to see recent at bats if your DD is recruited for her bat, as many as possible! Same for fielding, pitching ect. Just keep sending them updates, make yourself present and in the hunt!!

[Pale Rider]

Go watch some YouTube videos...some are utterly ridiculous...
Saw one that looked like the Matrix movie Mix with about 10 raunchy Rap songs. Lazer effects damn near gave me epilepsy...

[dusty]

My dd's video was as low on production value as it gets, self shot by dw at dd's HS while the marching band could be heard practicing in the background and edited by me and dd. We ran into some creative control issues when editing with dd, she didn't think she put a good drop ball on video while I countered that her drop was fine so we have a few unidentified drops mixed in with fastballs. We only put together a video when a college coach specifically asked for one to show her pitching coach before they invited us to their camp and it did work out fine for that purpose.

I've noticed the ones that are obviously sped up to create the illusion of velocity and always get a good laugh out of it. I also like the ones where you can hear faint instruction coming from off camera by a pitching coach that the pitcher nods along to (I guess it shows they're very coachable). I noticed one that was obviously sped up for the kid while she was pitching also showed her doing strength training and I think that kid ended up committing to an SEC school, albeit most likely as a walk-on.

While in-game video against good competition would certainly help it's one of those things that I never thought to do because I'm too caught up in the game. These can get over the top though when some daddy over-dramatizes the situation with an introductory black screen with captions like "Intensity", "Desire" etc. before setting up the situation in which the stud prospect produces results.

[Fastpitch4Life]

Do college coaches care if some short game video (hits) are supplied on Twitter links?

[curveballerguy124]

COACHES DO NOT CARE about all the different angle, music and bells and whistles.....True story guys keep it simple!! Just get them some video of your DD swinging, a few of her fielding, a few throwing and a few running....They can see what they need to see in just a few frames. One coach told me, sometimes too much video can be a bad thing where as too little might peak their interest just enough to go and see the kid in person. A lot of my girls that got recruited only had practice and game video from their iPhones nothing fancy at all.

[4th & Forever]

Just remember keep it short and sweet. Schools use video to eliminate players at a greater rate than use them to add players to their watch list. Have a coach look at your clips/ video before you send it out. Also if you say you run a 2.6 than I suggest you run a 2.6. First thing I do is put a stop watch to the home to 1st time on the video no matter what the video tells me the time is... college coaches do the same.