Emailing A College Coach
What to include in every email to a college coach
General Information: Name, Grad Year, High School Name, Club and Club Team Name/Year
Academic Information: Most Up To-Date GPA (be accurate), Test Scores
Soccer Specific Information: Position and Position stats like goals and Team Achievements and Relevant Team Stats, Athletic Stats if Relevant like height or speed stats. Next tournament and schedule if you have it. Highlight video or if you are making one say you will send it to them soon.
Contact Information: Your best phone number, email, and name and contact information for your coach or coaches you want them to contact
What college coach’s see or want to see
Less is more when it comes to detailed information. College coaches can receive 100’s of email per day and don’t have time to read through every detail of your life. Skip the I started playing at 5 years old and provide high level relevant stats for them. This is where you need to start putting yourself in a college coaches shoes and ask yourself what they want to see and start selling yourself. Pro Tip: Keep it simple!
Subject lines should tell the Highlights of you!
Include: Grad Year, position, academic achievements if relevant, team and possibly even schedule if attached or new video if relevant, Keep #’s and Stats
Exclude: Exclude long words and abbreviate when you can. Stop at around 50 or more characters.
The best subject lines contain: 2023 CDM, Placer United Black, 4.2GPA, 29 ACT
Examples:
2022 GK 6’2’’, De Anza ECNL, 1300 SAT, NEW VIDEO
2022 FWD, San Juan 04’s, Surf Tournament Schedule
2021 CM, MVLA Blue, *Updated 4.23 GPA and 33 ACT
Intro sentence should highlight WHY you are interested in the college and soccer program. Soccer is a great place to start and then get into how the school fits your soccer AND academic desires. Pro Tip: Use soccer first and academic’s second. Remember college soccer coaches are looking to build a good soccer team first and worry about the academics after that.
Examples:
I’ve been following the success of your program over the past year and wanted to reach out with interest in joining your program.
I wanted to email with interest after hearing how much Jane Doe enjoyed playing for you and spoke about how wonderful your soccer team and school are.
I see you are graduating two goalkeepers in the next two years and wanted to extend my interest in your program.
Example email
Subject Line: 2022 Forward, Top Scorer, De Anza, 1340 SAT
Dear Coach Johnson,
I have been following your team for the past year and was impressed by your 10-4-4 record in 2019 and after watching a few games online was even more impressed with your style of play. I wanted to reach out with interest because your program looks like the exact school and soccer program combination I am interested in.
My name is John Doe and I am a 5’8 forward on De Anza Force 04’s Elite. I have been playing with the De Anza Force Soccer Club for 4 years and recently was awarded the top scorer of our team and second in our NPL league. I think my work ethic, and desire to constantly improve and challenge myself would be a great fit at your program.
Academically, I have a 4.0 GPA and take numerous AP and honors classes at Madeup High School in Madeup, CA. After studying during the early part of my season I took the SAT and scored a 1340 and am interested in studying biology at your university which has a great reputation for its sciences.
I completed my highlight video from last season’s NPL season and I hope you view it here: Youtube or Vimeo Link
I hope to get back out on the field soon and will send you my schedule as soon as we get an updated version. If you are interested in seeing full game video from last season please let me know as I have a few good games against some of the best teams in the league available.
Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon!
John Doe
Class of 2022
Junior | Forward | 5’8’’
Online Profile: Link
Highlight Video: Link
Cell Phone: 444-444-4444
Coach’s Name: Robert Lewandowski
Coach’s Cell: 555-555-5555
MOST IMPORTANT THING: This comes from your email. You, as the prospective student-athlete, did the writing of this email. And you CC’d all the coaches on staff or directed this email to all 2-4 of them by taking the time to look up the staff. This takes time but shows genuine interest. Remember you are starting a process of getting to know and building a relationship with a college program and staff. You want to start it out on the right foot. An automated recruiting services that blasts 100 programs is not as genuine and often gets read and quickly deleted or blasted back with camp advertisement. Personalized emails get read and prioritized.
Pro Tip: Turn on read receipts on your email to see who viewed it. Read how here
Pro Tip #2: All college’s have an athletic staff directory so you can find almost everyone’s email or office number with a little research. Here is UPenn’s.
Pro Tip #3: Edit and review your email. Try not to leave too many grammatical errors in the email. But if you do have one it is okay. It shows this is not automated and you are as a human are writing it and are showing real interest.
Pro Tip #4: Never email a schedule the night before a showcase/tournament. Always provide coaches at least a few days to get a schedule of games to watch together. If you email the night before your email should only be to update times or field changes otherwise you won’t be on the schedule if you send it too late.
Last Pro Tip: Coaches usually work in the office, on the field and out recruiting (or now at home.) Don’t worry if you don’t get an email back right away and if you send an email at 10am on a Tuesday morning its can take some time to filter emails or have the coach get to a day later in the week when he or she is processing new emails from recruits.
Follow up emails
So now it has been a few days and you either have or haven’t heard from the colleges you reached out to. It is okay if they all don’t reach out immediately.
If a school DID reach out then you can start a process of communicating with them by sending them an update at least once a month. It doesn’t matter the update but you should send an email that reinforces your interest and provide any relevant updates to your grades, test scores, plans to test, tournament schedule, updated video or highlight video ect.
These are good check-ins with the coach. You can ask for feedback on the recruiting class. You can ask about the plan for that program returning to play or if they are permitted to train over the offseason or have student-athlete’s on campus. All you need is a good question to keep the conversation going.
Here is an example of a good follow up email after a coach responds to you:
Subject Line: 2022 Forward, Top Scorer, De Anza, *UPDATED 4.1 GPA
Dear Coach Johnson,
Thank you for your response. I wanted to update you on my most recent GPA which is 3.90 unweighted and 4.11 weighted. I’m working hard both on the field and in the classroom in order to find a great soccer program and university like yours.
As a reminder I was the top scorer on my De Anza Force team this past season and have just found out we will be attending the XYZ Showcase in Las Vegas and the ABC Tournament in Phoenix in the coming months. I will get you those schedules as soon as we get them and hope to either see you there or will send video links to the games or highlights from my play at each event.
I would be very much interested in coming to visit campus and want to know if it might be possible to set up a time to meet with you on campus in the coming months.
In case you haven’t seen my highlight video from the 2019 NPL season here is the link: Youtube or Vimeo Link
I am looking forward to getting back on the field soon in Las Vegas and Phoenix. On top of training with our team I have been doing small group training, individual trainings and strength work to try to continue to push my game and athleticism to the next level even during this stoppage here in Calfornia due to COVID-19.
Again thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon!
John Doe
Class of 2022
Junior | Forward | 5’8’’
Online Profile: Link
Highlight Video: Link
Cell Phone: 444-444-4444
Coach’s Name: Robert Lewandowski
Coach’s Cell: 555-555-5555
If a school DID NOT reach out and respond to your initial email you want to send them a follow up email a few weeks latter. Usually 2-3 weeks later is a good amount of time to allow someone to filter an inbox and respond to your email.
If the program did not respond then make sure you have all the correct emails and names and resend your initial email with an added line that you reached out a few weeks prior and are very interested in learning more about that program and would like to provide an updated schedule or highlight video or GPA. Most programs will respond with either camp information or a generic please fill out our questionnaire online which enters you into the recruiting software and will at least get things started.
Again if a program isn’t reaching out keep trying and eventually you will likely get someone to start a process with you. It’s either that or eliminate that program from your list and add another and keep going. You never know what is going on with coaching staff’s and program and at times programs can be in flux and timing might not be good for them.
Younger PSA’s tips
Freshman and sophomore’s in high school these tips are for you! As you know programs cannot respond directly to you so you will receive a generic response with camp info and probably a link to fill out a questionnaire. Just because you are a freshman or sophomore does not mean YOU cannot email and update coaches. And in fact the better you are at this the more likely you are to get on a programs radar and recruiting lists.
Pro Tip #1: So be consistent with updates as well. New GPA, test score, highlight video or tournament/showcase schedules are great follow up emails to provide to coaches. I would be emailing your list of 20-30 programs with a monthly update from the moment you make a list in that freshman or sophomore year until June 15th after your sophomore year and programs can finally respond without restriction. And don’t worry if they don’t reach out or you keep getting a generic email back. Lots of programs are playing catch up right now with COVID recruiting and the early communication only buys you a leg up on others and besides they aren’t allowed to really respond with much else anyway.
Pro Tip #2: Always add your coaches name and information! Remember this is the only way college coaches can get in touch with you or find out about you.
Pro Tip #3: Turn on email read receipts so you can see who viewed your email. Learn how here
How often should I email?
No matter what year you are the very minimum you should be reaching out is once a month to your list of schools. You can email more often if you have updates like new test scores, highlights, schedules, GPA or any other relevant information they might want to know.
Final Pro Tips:
Use a separate email address for your recruiting. It will help you track your contact and keep your school and social separate and more easy to follow. Your new email address should be your name and grad year. Example: peter.lowry2023@gmail.com
Never email a schedule to a showcase/tournament the night before the event. Coaches make their schedules the day before the event or even earlier so make sure you give them time to add you and your team to the schedule by emailing well in advance. Coaches go watch players who email and teams that are successful but they don’t watch players who email last minute.
After a tournament reach out and ask if they were able to see you play and get some feedback from them on things to work on! Then work on them!!!
Pair up tournaments and showcase locations with college visits if possible.
It is never a bad idea to ask college coaches if you can access game film or highlights of their team and information on that particular university or area of interest that you want to study.