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Rutherford County Juniors Volleyball Club | |||||
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High school Senior year:
Creating a video:If you decide to be your own recruiting service or you pay for a recruiting service, you should make a video tape.We need to catch the eye of college volleyball programs by making a video tape. With volleyball recruiting video tapes, there are three varieties - the skills tape, the game footage tape and a combination of both. College coaches prefer to see more skills demonstration on the video tape and less game footage (unless you have that perfect game where the flow evolves around you and everything is going perfect). A video tape that is all game footage, while the easiest to put together by Dad (or Mom), probably showcases your ability the least - how good is the competition, was the setting or passing not good that day for your team, was it the first or last match of a tournament, how often do you actually touch the ball during a game. For example, if you are a Middle Blocker, how long does it take for a slide play to happen on the video tape to show how good you are at hitting slides? Is there more than one? The best tapes focus on skills. A skills driven video tape allows the college coach to see, repeatedly, how good you are at your positional skills. We can guesstimate how high your approach touch is, we can quickly see how fast you load your attack elbow, it is clear whether you pop pass or follow through, do you deep dish your sets or is your release quick - many, many things that we can see in a skills tape, do not show up clearly in a game tape. When you make a skills tape, the first thing to do is just relax. If you don't think you are doing well, then you just start again. The erase button is the best feature when doing a skills tape. You should focus on those skills that are specific to your position: Middle Blockers should show all the attack options that they can hit, blocking footwork right and left, transition footwork from blocking to attacking (15-20 hits, 15-20 blocks/blocking footwork, 5 serves). Setters need to illustrate setting every possible attack option and setting from all the various zones on the court, along with end blocking movement and technique (20-25 sets, 5 attacks, 10 defensive plays/digs, 5 serves). Outside Hitters need to go through all the outside attack and combination attacks, show how you receive serve and your defensive movement (15-20 hits/backrow attacks, 5 blocks, 5-10 serve receive, 10 defensive plays/digs, 5 serves). Liberos/DS should be all about serve receive and defensive movement (15-20 serve receive, 15-20 defensive plays/digs, 5 serves, 5 backrow attacks). For each position, focus on the main responsibility of the position. In summary, have a short introduction (a couple minutes). Then have 1-2 minute clips of the players skills. Make the video between 10 and 15 minutes long. Game footage is good if it shows your skills. Make sure the viewer knows who you are on the video. Include a sheet with the players bio/demo, position, left/right handed, HS grad date, ACT/SAT test scores, standing and approach jump, vertical, reach, height, block touch, and 20 yard dash. It should also include HS and club volleyball honors. Summary:
The best approach is to have the items above in a plan with a timeframe. Before the beginning of your Junior year have teams selected that you want to make sure they know about you. Remember that September 1st of your Junior year schools can start sending you recruiting material. You want them to already know about you at this point. Have a communication plan created that gets your information to them on a regular basis. Also make sure you get enough information about the school that you can make a decision on whether you want to go there. This means you need to know the important items. Is it the school location, the coach, the players, team level, etc that will make you pick the school or drop the school. As you approach your HS graduation you need to be able to narrow down the schools to make that final decision. |