SKILLS SHOWCASES, SHOWCASE TOURNAMENTS, CAMPS AND CLINICS.
Ultimately, no player will ever get recruited to a college if she is not seen by the coach. There are only a few ways to accomplish this. They are mostly through skills showcases, showcase tournaments, tournaments, camps and clinics.
A. NFCA
At some point you will begin to here about skills showcases and showcase tournaments that you will be told your player “must attend”. That brings us to the NFCA. Every year there are a number of skills showcases and showcase tournaments that are either run or endorsed by the NFCA. A complete list of these can be found at the NFCA website. The site also has links to the tournaments themselves. As a general rule, the showcases run by the NFCA draw coaches from hundreds of schools from across the country, including some of the best softball programs. The showcases that are endorsed by the NFCA tend to draw more colleges exclusive to the region that the showcase is being held in. The NFCA tournaments are held over a three day period and the coaches are invited to attend the games. The skills showcases are held on the Thursday before the tournament begins.The skills showcases are held on one day, broken into a morning and afternoon session, based on positions. Players who play multiple positions are encouraged to stay for both sessions. Basically the players move from station to station. They throw, they field, they hit, they run. It is important to note that your player may attend the skills showcase even if her team is not playing in the accompanying tournament. Although people disagree with me about this, I encourage the idea of freshmen going to the skills showcases. The people who disagree with me suggest that there is no point in a freshman going because no one will look at her. To me, that is exactly the reason why the player should go as a freshman. If no one is paying attention to her, she can get the opportunity of having the experience of going without the pressure of performing well. If she does poorly, who cares? Who is even going to notice? On the other hand……………..
1. It gets her name in front of college coaches. Even if the coach does not remember her specifically, if he sees her again and remembers her name she has an advantage.
2. If she does well, a coach may well take note of her and begin to watch for her.
3. Players are being recruited younger than ever.
B. OTHER SHOWCASE TOURNAMENTS
In addition to the NFCA, there are a large number of other showcase tournaments. Some of them are very good and some are very bad, most of them have certain characteristics in common.
1. They will tell you that they have invited “hundreds” of coaches to attend, but cannot tell you how many will show up or who they are.
2. Most of the showcases draw only local or regional schools. Try to stick to the well established showcases and play on teams that participate in them.
C. TOURNAMENTS
Just because a tournament is not a “showcase” does not mean that coaches do not show up. In addition, any tournament can be a showcase for your player if you make it one. When you contact the college coaches be sure to send the team’s schedule and let her know where your player is going to be and when. Invite coaches to the tournaments
D. CAMPS AND CLINICS
Many schools hold softball camps in the summer and clinics in the winter. Camps and clinics are are excellent opportunities to be used as recruitment tools for the colleges and the players. Because the NCAA has such strict rules with regard to communications with prospective students, the coaches needed to find a way to talk to potential recruits without breaking the rules. Apparently if a player pays to be taught by the coach, no rules are broken. Because of this, camps and clinics can be used to as a way of being seen by and communicating with college coaches. I highly recommend attending these.
While skills showcases and tournaments are very valuable, usually no one event or observation is going to make your player be recruited by a particular school. Ideally, what happens at the skills showcases and tournaments is that she impresses a coach enough for him to start following what she is doing so that he can gather enough information to make a decision to recruit her or not. For this to happen at a skills showcase or tournament may be slim, with any particular coach. That coach must be observing that girl at a particular moment in time. This can be a matter of pure luck. On the other hand, attending a clinic or a camp gives the player anywhere from 1-4 days under the eyes of the coach. This gives the coach a much better opportunity to evaluate her skill level and other things intangibles that she may never see at a skills showcase. Most of the time these clinics and camps are posted some where on the websites. If you cannot find it, have your player email the coach for information or call the school.
Other than the obvious, there is one significant difference between camps and clinics. Although both are run by the head coaches of the schools, the camps will often bring in coaches from other schools to help run them, as opposed to a clinic in which it is likely that only coaches from that school will be present. Therefore, by attending the camps your player gets the added bonus of getting exposure to other coaches. Camps and clinics also give your player a way of measuring herself on a National level.
I would suggest that your player attend at least one camp or clinic at a school that you believe is above her level of competition. This camp will draw top notch players from across the country. By comparing your player against that level of competition, you will have a better idea of your player’s talent level. The same comparisons should be done at National tournaments and the NFCA run college showcases.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
College coaches see the game differently than you and I do. They also see players differently. Too many players get nervous going to showcases or anytime they are in front of a coach. This is natural, but keep in mind that softball is a game of failure and redemption. I am certain that college coaches want to see players fail at times just to see how they react to failure—whether they let one slip up hurt the rest of their game or whether they can refocus on the next play, the next at bat and stay in the game. This is a sign of quality and maturity that many college coaches are looking for. There is an old adage among coaches in all sports, “you can learn more from a loss than you can from a win”—This is also true at showcases. They can tell more about a player in how she handles failure than they can about anything else. Remind your players they don’t have to be perfect and when they believe that, then they will perform well. Also remind them to take warm ups seriously. Coaches may sit through three games and never see a girl make a play, but they can tell a lot from the way a girl warms up before the games.
E. GENERAL ADVICE
Your player, either by herself, or in concert with her travel team, will be exposed to coaches in one or more of the above ways. Whatever the methods of exposure are, she needs to maximize the possibilities of being seen. The only way to do that is through communication. Your player must be vigilant in contacting the coaches, letting them know where she is going to be and when. If she is going to a showcase tournament, go to the website for the tournament to see if there is list of colleges attending. If so, review the list, do your research and email any new schools that may now be of interest to your player. If your player is going to a camp or clinic, be sure to email the coach before hand and let her know that your player is coming and looking forward to meeting her. See if you can make this interactive. For example, when my daughter was planning to go a clinic in North Carolina, we asked the coach to recommend a good hotel near campus. You want to create some kind of connection between the player and the coach. Inviting responsive emails does this. When a coach is impressed by a player he will directly or indirectly contact her, depending on her year of graduation. If there is such contact, the research should be done as set forth above.
In addition, if a player knows that a college coach is going to come to see her in a particular tournament or game, she should relay that information to her travel coach so he knows to make sure that she is in the game and at the position that the college coach wants to see her.
For more information about showcases, please go to the Gold or A? page.
Showcases