Navigating recruiting and the pressures of college swimming: How to prepare athletes.
The college recruiting landscape has changed: this is not the environment that coaches or parents of swimmers experienced. The pressures, choices and complications are immense for young people and their families.
Last month,in our GAIN Swim community, we invited a college coach from each of the top three divisions to share their advice and experience. We also had sports psychologist Christopher DeSantis sharing his advice on dealing with the pressures of the new environment.
In addition to the video presentations, there are written articles, session planning sheets and a quiz linked to help reinforce learning.
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The importance of reliability in college applications
Chris DeSantis
In my line of work, a person who responds promptly to communications is like manna from heaven. I say that not to shame anyone; in fact, my hope is the opposite. I recognize we live in an environment where attention is drawn constantly from things that are probably healthy for us to engage with to ultimately meaningless fluff.
I was talking with a new potential client today and complimenting them on their excellent and prompt communication. In the process, my thoughts went back to my days coaching at Georgia Tech and an insight from the world of recruiting that I thought was worth sharing.
Often, we think of recruiting (or marketing and sales, as I call it now) as a game of excitement. Get people jazzed up about working with you, and that will get at least some of them to commit to paying cold, hard cash for whatever you’re selling.
In the recruiting game, I always hear a lot about excitement. There is backwards reasoning from that excitement too. Why swim fast in dual meets? Because it generates excitement. Why have a popping social media presence? EXCITEMENT.
Now perhaps I am just moulding the world to fit what I am capable of, but I find that excitement is vastly overrated in all of these instances. What I find myself drawn to is far less sexy. What I find gets me to commit is a sense of reliability.
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