bjackson

It’s one step to send out some initial emails but it takes ongoing communication to generate interest and develop a relationship with the coach. Based on NCAA rules, DI coaches can't respond to your emails or speak to you until June 15th prior to your junior year. So it will mostly just be update emails that you will be sending up to that point to try and generate their interest. If it's after June 15th then hopefully you are currently in communication with some college coaches and receiving feedback on their part. Whichever scenario, it is necessary to maintain some form of communication and updates as you move throughout this process. If you are being too unrealistic with your options then you may not be very productive in your efforts, so do keep that in mind. If you are struggling with what to say in your updates [...]

While I am an advocate for having big goals to work hard to achieve and keeping some dream schools on your list, you have to be cautious about what percentage of dream schools vs realistic schools you have on your list. I say to contact 50+ schools but as with most parts of this process that is dependent on many factors. The reason I use that number is for the average player who is doing this process on their own, without knowledgeable or reliable guidance, I have seen a trend of what happens if they create a list of less than that. When I am providing general advice and tips on steps of the process I am trying to consider what most players will tend to do and why they may not get the coach responses they are expecting. So if a player takes the time to [...]

It’s never too early to research schools and golf programs. This will give you an idea of what it takes to play for those programs so you can set goals and get to work! You can check out the team and school websites for both academic and athletic information. And of course, their social media! Golfweek, Golfstat, and Scoreboard by Clippd are great resources for rankings, results, and articles. And when looking at the current players’ scores remember a few things... courses are longer, tougher, and played in fall and spring only and it’s a higher level of pressure and demand that college players are under so scores aren’t exactly reflective of junior golf scores. Also, don’t compare yourself to the 5th player on the team to see what is realistic, coaches are trying to make the team better, which means they need to replace their 2nd [...]

Create a resume. Seems pretty simple right? Wrong. It’s amazing how many resumes I’ve seen that are difficult to read, hard to access and don’t contain the information a coach needs to begin their initial assessment of you as a potential recruit. I’ve had players send me resumes that don’t even include a single tourney score. There are several ways to format resumes that are all acceptable - document, personal website, an online resume service. For the most part, a coach doesn’t care about the format you use, they just need it to be accessible, easy to read, organized, and contain the information they need to see. At a minimum include: ✔️ Name and grad year ✔️ Picture ✔️ Personal contact info ✔️ Tourney results in a nice format that is easy to read ✔️ Stats/Ranking ✔️ Academics ✔️ Extracurricular activities ✔️ Awards and accolades (golf, academic, [...]