Recruiting Corner

Tony Graystone, head women's volleyball coach at West Texas A&M University since 1999, offers the following tips for the college prospect. Graystone became the winningest active coach in NCAA Division II by percentage, winning 90.2 percent of his matches (165 wins, 18 losses) in his first five seasons after becoming the fastest to reach 100 wins in NCAA history in any sport and division. Graystone led the Lady Buffs to the NCAA Division II national semifinals this year with a 34-4 record, pushing his career mark to 245-48. WTAMU has reached the NCAA Division II Elite Eight four times under Graystone's leadership. He also was an assistant coach on the WTAMU team that captured the national title in 1997.

1. What types of things do you want to see of the recruit in a recruiting video?

Our coaches look at video in two contexts: skill development (practice setting) and skill application (game footage). When evaluating skill sets in the practice gym, we are looking to see things like footwork, arm swing mechanics, blocking technique, how they have been taught to pass or set, etc. If a setter has been taught to set completely differently than how we train that skill, we know the player will have a longer adjustment period in our system than a player who has been taught the same way we do it. We also look to see how well they jump, how hard they hit, etc. Basically, we are trying to determine if their skill set is good enough to compete at our level, and what types of corrections we would need to make.

When watching game footage, we are looking to see players apply their skill sets in a game setting. Do they use the same footwork and technique in a game setting, or do they fall back on bad habits? We are also looking to evaluate their athleticism (quickness, pursuit of balls, out of system plays, how quickly they get off the floor, etc.). And we also try to see some patterns related to work ethic, how they handle coaching, how they recover from mistakes, what kind of teammate they are, etc.?

As a final note, ideally recruiting videos should showcase a player’s strengths relative to their position. I don’t care to watch a middle blocker set for 5 minutes on video, when I could be seeing more reps of her hitting, blocking and transitioning. And most videos we see include way too much footage of serving. Unless a player is jump serving, we fast forward through serving about 90 percent of the time.

2. Are recruiting services helpful to the college coaches?

Recruiting services definitely have their place, but in our program we use them strictly as a means of identifying prospects and getting contact information on them. Because coaches and scouting services have such different criteria and opinions on players, we get our own evaluation before contacting a recruit referred to us by our service.

Additionally, we prefer to hear from a prospect directly as opposed to the recruiting service. This is really the only way we truly know if a player is interested in our program, and we will always take a look a player we hear from directly first over a player referred from a service.

3. When should a recruit start looking into colleges, including taking the first unofficial visit?

The sooner the better. All programs are looking to receive commitments prior to the early signing period, so they can spend more time evaluating the next class. Unofficial visits really help coaches because it shows a true commitment by the prospect and allows the recruiting process to go so much faster. Prospects should consider taking official visits beginning the summer prior to the 10th grade. Attending summer camp is probably the best way to do this, since prospects would also get to spend a few days working directly with the coaching staff and could get a better feel for how they would fit in with that program.

4. If a recruit has not been offered by a school at the start of their senior high school season, what tips can you provide to help the player get noticed?

Prospects should do a lot of research on programs and universities to narrow down their choices, and then directly contact every program on their list. This can be done with email, phone call or mailing an information packet to the school. They should also realize that by the beginning of their senior year, many programs will be finished recruiting scholarship positions. This means players either need to be prepared to accept a partial scholarship or walk-on position, or be willing to look further down their list and be satisfied with a program that wasn’t their first choice. They should also be willing to make unofficial visits, attend tryout sessions, offer game footage, etc. Anything they can do to speed up the process and get the coaching staff familiar with them quickly would be most helpful.

5. Other helpful tips:

Prospects should make it very obvious what the name of their club team is. Just saying that you play on the 17-1 team, often isn’t specific enough, and could result in fewer coaches watching you play. If your club has a 17 National team and a 17 Select team, it may not be clear which one is the 17-1.

When sending a highlight video with game footage, be specific as to what uniform number and color you are wearing. This becomes very frustrating to a coach when they aren’t sure if they are evaluating the correct player.

Give correct contact information for club and high school coaches, and let them know where you’ve sent information, so they can be prepared to give a good reference for you.

Prospects should check their email regularly, and respond when coaches write them. Let them know you are interested, and if you aren’t, let them know that too. Coaches hate to waste time recruiting a player that isn’t interested in their program.

NOTE: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of USA Volleyball.