While the basic approach college coaches and scouts use to recruit high school athletes have remained the same, one of the more notable changes is the use of social media. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are just a few of the social media sites that allow people to stay connected and enhance the recruiting process.

Combined with the advent of the smartphone, social media has changed the way people stay in touch and has become a method for high school athletes to reach out to colleges and universities.

With colleges reaching out to their fan bases using social media, it’s no surprise that coaches also use it as part of their recruiting efforts. This has created both positive and negative aspects for athletes in terms of how it can affect their chances at being recruited. In fact, there are several cases in which a promising high school talent cost themselves a chance for a scholarship because of their misuse of social media.

How You Can Use Social Media to Your Advantage

For high school students who are looking to get scholarship opportunities from colleges, here are a few tips that will help improve your chances.

Presentation: How you are portrayed on social media is how people like college coaches and recruiters will see you. So, while your friends and family may know one side of you, those who are considering you for their team do not unless that is portrayed on your social media. Keep in mind that this does not mean staying away from subjects like racism, sexual orientation, or political points of view. Rather, it is the use of coarse language, unsettling photos, and vulgarity that will have a negative effect.

Photographs: All it takes is one image of something controversial such as weapons, nudity, or drugs to pull you from consideration. You can use your privacy settings to ensure that your photos are protected and to ensure that you are not tagged in a photo by someone else that is controversial in nature.

Language: If you post something that will have your mother or grandmother disapproving, then you shouldn’t post it. This is mostly about keeping your language in check because the use of profanity is the most eye-catching of all ways to have college coaches lose interest in recruiting you for their team. Go over your posts and tweets over the past several months and remove or at least clean-up those that have profanity.

Keep in mind that your social media presence should still represent who you are, but it needs to be presentable to anyone who views it.

Why SportsForce is the Ultimate Solution

To make the most of your efforts in getting recruited, SportsForce provides proven solutions to help in the preparation and marketing of your abilities. In addition to the many services SportsForce provides, one of them is to advise you on your social media accounts so they are more presentable to college coaches.

This does not mean changing who you are, but simply presenting yourself on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media accounts as your best self. Let SportsForce show you how to reach college coaches to help achieve your goals. Sign up for a free evaluation Here.

I chose UC Davis because it felt like it was a perfect fit for me. I felt at home there, where as I hadn’t felt that anywhere else. I also loved the campus and all of the people that I got to meet there, especially my future teammates. Finally, the last reason I chose UC Davis was because it excels in the field I want to major in and the professors are some of the most knowledgeable minds in the teaching world.

2. Share your recruiting story and status

My recruiting process started in the fall of my freshman year. I was going to be participating in a huge National tournament and some of the older girls on my team had suggested that I should put together a resume that contained a photo, my name, academic accomplishments and of course athletic accomplishments. They also recommended that I email this resume to the coaches from any school I was thinking about looking into. Although the NCAA rules said they could not reply to me, this allowed me to enter the recruiting radar of some of the coaches. I followed the same process for a few more tournaments I attended that year and hoped that my constant introductions and level of play would interest some coaches. During my Sophomore year, I had my video done by the wonderful SportsForce team! They did everything I could have asked for and more! They even went back and added 10 clips of footage that I had obtained from a tournament in February of my sophomore year. I also followed the same process with tournaments, but the coaches were still not allowed to contact me due to the NCAA rules. That summer between my Sophomore and Junior year, I attended many field hockey camps on both the west and east coast. I also toured about 15 colleges on the east coast. While I was there I wanted to see if I would feel at home on the campus and to view the facilities that I could have possibly played on. I would recommend touring any colleges that a student-athlete is seriously thinking about during that summer because your Junior year is a big year for the recruitment process. It is best to know what you like and what you do not like in a school as you will be spending four years of your life there! Finally in my Junior year, I was invited on a few unofficial visits to campuses and I instantly fell in love with UC Davis. The team, coaching staff, facilities, professors, and the campus itself instantly made it feel like a home away from home. I also attended a few more tournaments that year and sent out both my resume and video. Now that it was my Junior year, I could have limited interaction with coaches via email and I was able to narrow down which ones were interested in me and which were not. In December, I was given a verbal commitment offer from the UC Davis coach and they asked me to think about it. I seriously thought about it and when I was invited to their Junior Day in April, I accepted the verbal offer and could not have been happier with my decision!

3. When did you start your recruiting process?

I started my recruiting process in the fall of my freshman year.

4. What advice would you give to other players and parents with the recruiting process (ex. start early, get a highlight video)?

Advice that I would give to players and parents is to definitely start early with the recruiting process. Your freshman year is an excellent time to organize a list of colleges that the player is interested in and focus on both the athletic and academic programs. My parents made sure that I am going to the school I want to go to and not just for the athletic aspect of it. It is important to find a place where the student-athlete will be happy and successful as they will be spending four years of their life there! Another tip is to make sure you get a video done in your sophomore or beginning of your junior year, as this is the prime time to start sending the video as well as the resume off to college coaches. Lastly, make sure that both the student-athlete and their parents go and tour the colleges in question before any commitments are made so you can get a good a sense of where the student-athlete may eventually end up and where the parents would be coming to visit.

5. What excites you the most about starting college?

The thing that excites me most about starting college is being able to meet people from not only all over the country, but also all over the world. I love interacting with people so I am definitely excited about meeting new people with different upbringings and stories and hopefully making life long friendships with them. This will especially apply to my future team, as I am positive that connections will be made during the years that will continue long past the end of college!

Over the last five years SportsForce Recruiting has helped over 1,000 student-athletes and families successfully navigate the college recruiting and athletic scholarship process while saving families on average $50,000 in college expenses.

Learn How We Help Families

This is a guest post courtesy of Jennifer Lynch at TopOnlineColleges.com

Height: 5’4″ Position: Center Forward Class: 2010 School: Scripps Ranch High School

Andi Earle is the senior captain from the Scripps Ranch Field Hockey team that took first place at the Serra Tournament and is the defending Division II CIF Champions. This season alone, Earle has recorded 20 games played, all of which she has started, 34 goals, 13 assists and 94 points. She assisted in the lone goal that lifted Scripps Ranch over Fallbrook in the finals of the Serra Tournament.

A member of the highly competitive US Field Hockey Futures Elite team, Earle was also a qualifier for the Junior Olympics in field hockey in 2008. Earle is a forward for her high school team and a dominant scorer. Her coach, Jane Morrill, told the San Diego Union-Tribune, “She’s the one. When you need a goal, she’ll get it done,” said Falcons coach Jane Morrill. Earle is currently considering Michigan, University of California Berkeley, Stanford and UC Davis to continue her field hockey career.

Visit Andi’s SportsForce profile HERE

SportsForce began coverage of a new sport this week: Field Hockey. We can’t deny the popularity of this sport and want to offer our athletes and audience all access. We recently covered the Scripps Ranch vs. Cathedral Catholic, check out the highlights below.

Though Field Hockey is now high on the SportsForce radar, there are still limited opportunities for Division I play in our home state of California. The North County Times recently covered the lack of opportunities and the start up Division I program at UC Davis. The program has in-state athletes, and more specifically, athletes from San Diego and North County flocking to it.

The North County Times writes:

“…when Vianney Campos was named head coach and put in charge of starting a program at UC Davis, there was no doubt about her first recruiting stop.

‘I played at Eastlake, so I knew where to go to get players,’ Campos said.

When the recruiting process was over, Campos had 27 players for her first-year program —- 15 from San Diego, including 11 from North County.”

The article explains the increased level of play on the West Coast in recent years and in increase in talent,

“Since 2002, 72 field hockey players from North County high schools have gone on to play in college.

‘There are so many more opportunities now than when we all played a decade ago,’ said Kelli Gannon, now the head coach at San Pasqual. ‘When we played, you had to go east if you wanted to play collegiately.’

‘The West Coast teams have become very competitive over the last few years, and that’s good for the West Coast kids.'”

The creation of UC Davis’s program brings the number of Division I field hockey programs to four in the state. Though as the NC Times reports, there are other level of opportunities in the state,

“Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara, USC and UC San Diego have club programs. Cal Poly is said to be considering adding field hockey to its varsity roster.”

You can read the full article here.