 Sports Recruitment video
 What Parents Need to Know
Preparing your high schoolers for the college application process is without a doubt a complicated endeavor. Parents and students have to deal with the test preparation classes, campus visits, narrowing down the many great choices to just a few, getting financial aid quetions answered and ultimately, waiting for the schools' decisions.
For high school athletes who hope to play their sport in college, or even better, receive a scholarship, the process is even more demanding. Increasingly, college sports recruiters are requesting high school candidates for a sports video that highlights their talents and abilities.
Producing a sports video for the student athlete is the best way to highlight their strengths and make a visual impact on the college recruiters decision process. During the dead period when, according to NCAA recruitment regulations, coaches may not have any in-person contact with student athletes or parents, having a video in their hands is invaluable.
“Many of our sports videos are produced for student athletes that have been requested by college recruiters to submit a video. In other cases, parents
are already a bit more informed about the process and are planning ahead”,
says Lynda Viteri, Co-Owner of C & L Video Services in Huntington.
There are a few ways to go about having a video produced. Some parents hire a videographer to tape a few of their athlete’s games in an effort to collect excellent, close-ups and medium-wide shots. Other parents tape the games themselves. Unfortunately, those who have not prepared ahead end up relying on footage shot by the school team or someone hired by the team. The downside to this is that the footage is usually shot very wide in order to show the play of the entire team, instead of focusing on the one athlete.
Next, this video footage must still be edited. Unless acollege recruiter has expressly asked for an entire game video, the video should be comprised of highlights of plays and skills that showcase the athlete’s abilities. Remember, the goal is to get your student recruited to the team and in some cases, to receive a sports scholarship. The highlight video sent to recruiters must be no more than a few minutes long. Recruiters are looking at hundreds of candidates and will only have a few minutes to have their curiosity more than peaked. While the best quality will come from video that has been shot by a professional, good highlight videos can be produced from amateur footage. College recruiters are not as concerned with the quality of the video. What they want to see, for the most part, are the abilities and skills of the candidate. Actually, some recruiters do not like candidate’s videos to look too professional, so special sensitivity should be paid to this by your video editor.
“Although we are often hired to shoot games for sports videos,” says Carlos, “we usually recommend that parents take the footage themselves since they are usually present at most of the games. We have no problem with using amateur footage in the final edit and, in fact, we are available to give videography tips to the amateur shooter.” Taking Carlos’ advice will definitely keep the cost of producing the highlight video down.
One last tip to parents, don’t skimp on the editing and do not be a do-it-yourselfer where editing is concerned. Let a professional video editor help you accomplish your goal, someone who knows how to market your athlete and appeal to coaches. “We always ask a lot of questions when we get inquiries for sports scholarship videos”, says Lynda. “It is important that we understand the overall goal, which, in reality, is different for each student-athlete. We would not be doing our job if we did not try to help parents and students achieve their objectives.”
As much as you and your student-athlete are sifting through college information, college recruiters are sifting through lots of information on potentially hundreds of candidates for their teams. The NCAA has strict recruiting regulations that govern when and what type of contact coaches can have with student athletes and parents, and the timeframe for official and unofficial visits to college campuses. The guidelines differ for each sport and college division.
For more information:
www2.ncaa.org
www.clvideo.com
www.clvideoproductions.com
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