Month: October 2015

College Recruiting: Contacting coaches, pt. 4 – Laying out who you are and contacting coaches when you’re not a senior

College Recruiting Teammates & Coaches

College Recruiting: Contacting coaches, pt. 4 – Laying out who you are and contacting coaches when you’re not a senior

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Previously: Intro || The recruiting timeline + what to consider || What do coaches look at? || Contacting coaches, pt. 1 ||  Contacting coaches, pt. 2 || Contacting coaches, pt. 3

To put the recruiting process into perspective (and to offer up a dose of reality), Coach Lindberg said the following (talking obviously about the men’s side of recruiting): “Out of the entire country there are on average 60-80 males that are or could be considered ‘highly recruitable’. They’re the ones that all the coaches know about and have interactions with on a fairly regular basis. Beyond that, add in another 100-120 athletes from around the world for programs that do international recruiting and you end up with a pool of roughly 200 athletes that can have an impact on their programs at the highest level.”

Because the pool of people who can have a real impact on programs is so small, it’s not only imperative that you put the work to make yourself a competitive recruit but it’s also important to very clearly lay out who + what you are to the coaches (in both questionnaires and emails) so they’re not left to fill in the gaps on their own. Generic emails like “Hi, I’m ____ from ____ and I’m interested in ____, please call me and tell me more about your program.” will sit in an inbox for a “very, very, very, very” long time because it doesn’t help the coach get to know or  understand you.

As has already been discussed in last few “contacting coaches” posts (here, here, and here), things you should include in your emails are who you are, where you’re from, your coach’s name(s), how many years you’ve rowed/coxed, one or two notable accomplishments, your weighted/unweighted GPA, SAT/ACT scores (or the dates you plan on taking them if you haven’t already), applicable physiological data (height/weight), your most recent erg score(s), etc. Coaches are turned off by having to guess this info so don’t hold back or assume your stats aren’t good enough.

To quote Coach Lindberg again, “it’s better to know what you are than what you think you might be”. Obviously you need to be realistic about it (aka don’t email D1 men’s heavyweight programs when your 2k is 6:58 as a junior) but if the trend of recent 2ks for recruited athletes falls between 6:04 and 6:12, don’t assume they’re not gonna look at you if you’re at a 6:16.

Another one of the many common questions that comes up is contacting coaches if you’re not a senior. The rule is that you can email/call them anytime you want, they just can’t contact you directly before July 1st of your senior year (which is why such a big deal is made out of that day). They can reply to emails and talk to you on the phone if they answer it when you call but if they miss the call for example, they’re not allowed to call you back. Similarly with emails, they can reply to emails you send them but they can’t be the first one to make contact. It’s a little confusing but it’s not like it’s some big secret that the NCAA rule book is convoluted and annoying.

It’s unlikely that you’re going to have any real need or reason to contact them as a sophomore and maybe even as a junior depending on your level of experience but if you feel the need, you can reach out and say that you understand they might not have time or be able to reply to you but you wanted to introduce yourself, you’re a [whatever year you are], and then include height, weight, GPA, year in school, a goal (trying to make 1V, working on 2k time, etc.), etc. and that you will follow up with updates in the future. If you’re going to be at races they might also be at (particularly head races), let them know what event you’re entered in, your bow #, what seat you’re in, and the time of your race. This will allow them to scope you out if/when they’ve got time and make a mental note of who you are and what you looked like.

Similarly, go to camps. The coaches do remember you, it’s a good way to make initial connections (particularly if you haven’t begun the recruiting process yet or aren’t a junior/senior), and it gives you something to reference in your emails when it does come time to reach out to them.

Next week: The worst emails coaches have received and what they think of “highlight videos”…

Coxing Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: River tour of the Head of the Schuylkill course

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If you’re new to the Schuylkill, check out this video that goes through the course and points out all the relevant landmarks and points along the race.

Related: Navigating the Schuylkill River (Philadelphia, PA)

Also check out the post linked above that I did last year that gives some additional insight into the river, bridges, etc.

Erg Playlists

Music to erg to, pt. 106

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I’ll be walking along the course with coxswains today at 11am and 2pm so if you want to join us, we’ll be meeting on the Boston side of the BU bridge, right across from the BU boathouse. Email me or tweet me (@beantownkmd) throughout the day if you have questions.

Also, f you haven’t signed up for Uber yet, you can sign up with my code (pg5yb) and get a free ride worth $20. I highly recommend doing this because it’s gonna be cold and why walk more than you need to, especially when you’re tired from racing? Alternatively, if you’re driving and don’t want to deal with the hassle of finding a parking spot on the street (lol good luck with that, welcome to Boston!), you can download the SpotHero app and sign up through this link to get $5 off. I just found this app last night and used it to reserve a spot (yes, you can reserve a spot) in one of the garages in Harvard Square which was a lifesaver since I’ll be rowing out of Weld. Highly recommend.

College Recruiting: Contacting coaches, pt. 3 – How much info is too much?

College Recruiting Teammates & Coaches

College Recruiting: Contacting coaches, pt. 3 – How much info is too much?

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Previously: Intro || The recruiting timeline + what to consider || What do coaches look at? || Contacting coaches, pt. 1 ||  Contacting coaches, pt. 2

In last week’s post we talked about what to say when emailing coaches and what they specifically want to see in those emails. This week we’re gonna talk about the extent of what you should share and how much is too much when it comes to talking about extracurriculars, academic scores, etc. What you should take away from this is that the relationship you’re creating with the coaches is a professional one, thus you should only be sharing what’s important and relevant at any given time.

“How much info is too much” was a question posed to the panel of coaches at NRC. Kate Maloney (Williams College) started off by saying that the more succinct your email is, the more likely you are to get a response. If your email is very long, contains multiple paragraphs, etc. coaches will lose interest, not because what you have to say isn’t interesting but because they’ve got a lot of things going on and a limited amount of time to get it all done in.

This really reiterates a lot of what was said last week which should be a pretty solid indicator of how much value coaches place on emails that are concise and to the point. Similarly to a paper you’d write for school, don’t be afraid to have a couple drafts of your email if you need to where you progressively edit it down to just what needs to be said. I’ve posted plenty of examples on here (in the last several weeks alone) that should make this relatively easy to do.

Related: College recruiting: Contacting coaches, pt. 2 – What do coaches want to see in an email?

You might think that you need to lay everything out up front in order to pique their interest but 95% of that “extra stuff” that you’d include isn’t relevant right then. It’s like laying out your entire life story on a first date – it just comes off as trying way too hard to sell yourself and the person on the other side of the table is gonna get bored. Plus, if you put it all out there in the beginning, it’s unlikely they’ll remember everything you say so you’ll just have to repeat it again anyways and/or it limits what you’ll have to talk about in future conversations. The further into the recruiting process you get, the more info you can share because that’s when coaches will start asking you about your extracurriculars, why you think rowing will be a positive asset to your college experience, etc. By this point (presumably a few months into the game) they’ll have enough info to take to the admissions department and say “this is what Emily can bring to the community”.

An alternative to word-vomitting in your into email is to include your relevant stats, academic info, etc. in a resume and send it along as an attachment. This allows you to include a few more details in a much more easily digestible format and gives the coaches a chance to get to it when they have time. Ed  Slater from Trinity College suggested this and several coaches agreed that they’d much prefer a resume (provided it’s professional looking and not just sloppily thrown together) than a dense detail-filled email. Something he said to avoid doing though (regardless of whether it’s in a resume or email) is to leave out “projected” scores – projected 2ks, GPAs, SAT/ACTs, etc. He used an example where he received an email from a prospective recruit that didn’t say what his current score was and the score that was given wasn’t representative of where he was at at that time. Instead of omitting stuff like that and thinking coaches aren’t going to notice or care, just be up front and say that your GPA, 2k, whatever isn’t where you want it to be yet but it’s something you’re actively working on to improve.

Another question that was spun off the “how much info is too much” one was about multi-sport athletes and whether or not that was something coaches would be interested in hearing about, to which everyone responded with a unanimous “YES”. This is definitely something you can briefly mention in your intro email and then get more into later as you start talking more. Multi-sport athletes are great because being an athlete and learning over the course of many seasons how to win, what it takes to get better at something, etc. are important traits that can give you a an edge because it shows coaches that you understand what it means to be passionate and committed to something.

It also helps because an athlete who pulls a 6:30 2k and only rows in the spring season but is a captain on the swim team and has set a school record in the butterfly is going to stand out a bit more than an athlete with a 6:30 2k who rows year round. (That in no way however means that you should go pick up another sport right now just to say you’re a multi-sport athlete and it’s not saying that you’re at some monumental disadvantage if you only participate in one sport.)

Next week: Laying out who you are and contacting coaches if you’re not a senior

Image via // Sofia Donnecke
HOCR: Weeks, Lowell House, and “The Turning Tree”

Coxing Racing

HOCR: Weeks, Lowell House, and “The Turning Tree”

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Previously: Getting to the starting line || Steering through the bridges || Landmarks along the course || Steering around the turns || Race plans || My general race plan || Yaz Farooq’s coxswain clinic || Race plan “hacks” || The course in meters

You can’t talk about Weeks without talking about the Powerhouse Stretch or Lowell House because how you’re positioned relative to both will have a pretty big impact on how efficient your turn through the bridge is.

Related: HOCR: Steering around the turns

If you’re unfamiliar with Harvard’s campus, Lowell House is an undergrad dorm that is frequently used as an HOCR landmark due it’s tall steeple and bright blue dome that stands out above the tree line along the Cambridge shore. When someone says “point at the blue dome”, this is what they’re talking about. In the picture below they are just to the right of center.

As you come up the Powerhouse Stretch, ideally you’ll be coming through the center arches of the River St. and Western Ave. bridges. You can use the Cambridge arches (the ones on the far right) but the center arches are “standard procedure”. Going through the Powerhouse your point is going to be on the center of the center arches (again, ideally) but as you come out of Western the next big landmark you should be aiming for is Lowell. (There is a “mini”-landmark that you can check yourself on immediately out of the bridge and that’s your position relative to the buoy line – you want to be pointed at the outermost buoy as it begins to turn around Weeks. This should take half a second to spot-check before you shift your focus to Lowell.) If you’re in a good spot then you won’t really need to adjust your point much but if you come out pointing at something else (the bridge, the Cambridge shore, etc.) you’ll have to do a little steering to set yourself up for Weeks.

As you get closer to the bridge you’ll start to see the dome disappear behind the horizon. This is normal and is supposed to happen. Too many coxswains freak out because they lose sight of Lowell, which I don’t really get because … what else did you think was going to happen? As it goes behind the trees, your focus should shift to “the turning tree”. If you go to Yaz’s clinic then you’ll probably hear her talk about this.

Related: Yaz Farooq’s HOCR Clinic

The turning tree is in the photo up above (in the center of the picture on the very far right hand side), although because the leaves haven’t changed yet it still blends in with the shoreline. Usually by HOCR it’s the only tree along that whole stretch of shore that has changed colors (usually to a bright yellow) so it’s pretty easily identifiable. It’s not hard to pick out regardless of what color it is though just because it sticks out over the water a bit, as you can see in the picture.

As you’re rowing towards Lowell you want to stay straight until you get even with the tree and then begin your turn to port to go through Weeks. Some coxswains go when their bow is even with the tree, some go when they are even the tree. I’ve personally found my turns to be more effective when I wait until I’m even with the tree but I think a large part of that has to do with how well your boat responds to the rudder. The start of the turn is pretty easy (AKA it should all be done on the rudder) so you shouldn’t be using pressure from the rowers quite yet but if you wait too long to turn (like until you’re past the tree) then you’ll need to use a lot more pressure from your starboard side to get you through cleanly.

Below is some video I took during practice last week of our two coxswains going around the turn during our most recent “5k Friday” piece. Both did a pretty good job steering through here so this should give you a good idea of how the turn should look.

Image via // @nathanaelleomusic
College Recruiting: Contacting coaches, pt. 2 – What do coaches want to see in an email?

College High School Recruiting Teammates & Coaches

College Recruiting: Contacting coaches, pt. 2 – What do coaches want to see in an email?

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Previously: Intro || The recruiting timeline + what to consider || What do coaches look at? || Contacting coaches, pt. 1

Whenever I have to write a legit email to someone that isn’t blog or team-related, figuring out what I want/need to say is always the hardest part. There’s an annoyingly fine balance between being straightforward with why you’re contacting them and giving them all the relevant information so that they don’t automatically discard your email for lack of details (or too many details).

Related: I’m a junior starting to look into the recruiting process. What would a good first email to a coach be formatted as? What should I include? How long should it be?

The same goes for contacting coaches, which I think is why I get asked so often what coaches want to see in these emails or what info should you include and what should you save for later. The latter we’ll talk about next week but today we’re gonna go over what coaches want you to include in your introductory emails, as well as the other conundrum people face when contacting coaches … what should the subject line be?

First things first: before you send any emails or reach out directly in any way to a coach, fill out the recruiting forms on the athletic department’s website. If you’re unfamiliar with how this works, each team has their own individual page on the AD’s site that lists the roster, schedule, highlights, etc. Sometimes the questionnaires are easy to find, other times they’re a little hidden but it shouldn’t ever take you more than 30 seconds to find.

To use ours as an example, all you have to do is click on the “recruit me” button at the top of the page, which opens a new page where all the MIT athletic programs are listed. From there you just select “Crew – Heavyweight” which will open up our questionnaire.

Ours, like most, is pretty comprehensive and as most coaches will tell you, the more information you include in the questionnaire itself the better. The less information you include, the more the coaches will fill in on their own and that’s the last thing you want. If you leave your 2k PR blank they’ll either assume it’s not good, you’re not proud of where you’re at, or you’re not on top of things and haven’t done one in awhile (which is just lazy because you can literally do a 2k at any time.) So, step one, before you email the coaches spend some time filling these out in their entirety. They’ll get an email saying you completed the forms and will likely be waiting for you to reach out from there.

Pro tip: To make the process go faster, gather all the info you need first (that includes academic test scores, erg scores, contact info for your coaches and guidance counselors, GPA, class rank, academic/athletic honors, etc.) and then fill everything out. This might take a couple days but it’s worth the time spent doing it. I remember my dad and I making a matrix for all this stuff (similar to the one I posted a few weeks ago, linked below, for college visits) and it made the process of filling all the questionnaires out a lot simpler.

Related: College evaluation grid

One week later (give or take – I’d say no less than five days later and no more than ten), send an email introducing yourself. Don’t regurgitate everything you included in the questionnaires and don’t try to sell yourself – just keep it short and to the point. You should include…

Your name, rower/coxswain, height/weight, and your 2k PR (obviously not applicable if you’re a coxswain)

“Really interested in the rowing program at _____” + one or two specific questions

“Would really like to speak with you” + “what’s the best time/number to reach you”

…and that’s IT.

Two points that the coaches at camp made that I thought were worth noting are that they read a lot of emails on their phone and don’t want to see an endless wall of text on a tiny 5″ screen, which is why succinctness is key . I fully admit to procrastinating on replying to emails if I open one up on my phone and have to keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to get to the bottom of it. It’s not that we’re uninterested in what you have to say, it’s just a little “ugh” inducing. If you’ve ever been assigned to read like, 100 pages of something before class the next day, it’s pretty much the same feeling.

The other point is that including a question mark in your email gives them a reason to contact you, hence the “what’s the best time/number to reach you” question. If you just rattle off a bunch of info but don’t give them any reason to reply, they’ll just say “mmk, cool” and file your stuff away … aka forget about it for awhile because you didn’t give them a reason to hit reply as soon as they finished reading.

Going back to the timing of when to contact the coaches after filling out the questionnaires, there’s also a “time limit” for when to reply after they’ve reached out to you. Once their email hits your inbox you’ve basically got a max of one week to respond. Anything beyond that and their level of interest starts to drop because you appear uninterested.

Outside of the “technical” info, what else do coaches want to see in your emails? Not all of this is mandatory stuff that you must include and a lot boiled down to each individual coach’s preferences but it’s good food for thought.

A short 30-second video clip of you on the water or erg

Again, obviously not applicable to coxswains.

No life stories, why you love rowing, etc.

I don’t want to say no one cares but … at this stage in the game no one cares.

Did you use spellcheck, address it to the right school/coach, etc.

This should be common sense but seriously, it takes two seconds to double check so just do it. To piggy back off of this too, write in complete sentences and for the love of god, use proper grammar and punctuation. I get emails from people all the time that make me seriously question if your elementary teachers just completely skipped over that part of school because the writing is THAT awful. Don’t think for a second that this doesn’t have an immediate impact on my (and other coaches) first impression of you, especially if you’re a coxswain. You’re in high school, there is literally no excuse for you to still be writing like a third grader. None whatsoever. If your writing skills aren’t up to par, fine, but at least get someone to proofread what you write before you send it.

Show you’re interested and paying attention by mentioning results

This refers to the college’s results, not your own. HOCR is next weekend so it wouldn’t be the worst thing to include a “PS, congratulations on winning the Champ 8+ at Head of the Charles!” or whatever if the team you’re contacting did particularly well. If you email them during the off-season you can mention their winter training trip – “I saw the video that the team linked on Twitter of the winter training trip in Clemson and it looked like you guys had a really productive week! Is Clemson where you go every year or do you cycle through different locations?”.

Don’t include links to your BeRecruited page

This was split 50-50 but one coach did make a point that they get emails whenever someone has noted that they’re interested in a particular school so it’s not like they won’t see it if you don’t include a link. A few coaches said that they just don’t have time to look at them, particularly if you’re contacting them when the teams are in-season, and one said that rowers/coxswains who use sites like that aren’t the type of athlete they want anyways. I’m still confused by that statement but the point is that sites like that, while useful, tend to be hit or miss with coaches. Knowing that I’d probably leave it out of my emails.

Indicate what year you are in school. Don’t assume that they will assume you’re a junior

Self-explanatory.

When applying to Ivies or similarly academic-heavy schools (MIT, Stanford, etc.) in particular briefly highlight your GPA in your intro email

“Hi, I’m Sam, I’m a 3rd-year starboard rower from Boston, MA with a 3.8 unweighted GPA and a 6:19 2k PR.” …or something to that effect.

Last but not least, the subject line. The first sentence of the body is the most important part of the email so keep the subject simple and do NOT leave it blank. Coach-endorsed examples include “Interested in rowing at [name of the school]” and “Prospective rower/coxswain – [your name]”.

Next week: How much info is too much?

Image via // @harvardheavies