College Camp Strategy
I would like to tell you a bit about my personal college recruiting story, and how I used college camps to get scholarship offers from each of the school’s camps I attended.
In 9th grade, I knew I wanted to attend Stanford University, so after my sophomore year I attended Stanford’s summer football camp. It was a great experience for me for several reasons.
- Gave me on campus exposure to make sure I was going to LOVE the school
- It gave me LIVE exposur Coach Dennis Greene to and the Stanford staff, and it put me on their RECRUITING RADAR SCREEN
- It gave me a TON of confidence that I can play at the BIG TIME level. Coming from Fargo, ND, I was unsure about my ability to compete on a national scale, and college camps allowed me to compete against people all over the country…some of them top prospects.
To give you an idea of HOW valuable a college camp can be for your overall recruiting process, the first year I was at Stanford’s camp I was there with Steve Stenstrom…Stanford offered him a scholarship the following season. The next summer I attended 3 camps: Nebraska, University of Minnesota, and Stanford. I was at the Nebraska camp with Brook Berringer who Nebraska offered a full ride scholarship, and I attended the Stanford camp with Mark Butterfield…Stanford ended up offering both Mark and myself scholarships after our senior seasons.
MY PERSONAL CAMP STRATEGY FOR YOU TO USE
So, if you have a DREAM school like I did, I would encourage you to attend their camp after your sophomore year. It will help you get on their RECRUITING RADAR SCREEN…plus, it will OBVIOUSLY help you develop your skills.
My junior summer heading into my senior year, I still wanted to attend Stanford, and I also knew I needed to have a back up plan. So my junior summer, I went to 3 different football camps: Nebraska, U. of Minnesota, and Stanford. This was a great experience, because again it helped me develop my skills and raise my confidence about my ability to compete at a high level.
Fortunately, I performed well at all 3 camps, and was offered the opportunity to play at each school. My coaching to you would be to be sure and attend 2-3 camps at schools that are ACTIVELY RECRUITING YOU! It is very important that I stress the words ACTIVELY RECRUITING YOU! In order to maximize your resources (time and money), I always encourage athletes to go to camps where they have a chance to get a scholarship/play. Unless you are STRICTLY attending a camp for college level instruction, it is a waste of your resources to go to a college camp where there is no hope for you to play.
In order to better define what I mean by “ACTIVELY RECRUTING YOU” here is a simple example: If you are a football player, schools can contact you starting mid-April through May. If a school contacts you during this time then they are ACTIVELY recruiting you, and if it is a school that you would like to attend then I would encourage you to go to that camp. It will be a GREAT use of your time and resources.
This is just a brief description of how you can use camps to your advantage. If you have any questions, please, ask your questions in the comments section. Click on the following link to get a POWERFUL Educational Recruiting Video.
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