Dan Tudor

For years, recruiting services have enjoyed a love-hate relationship with college coaches.

On the one hand, coaches love good information on good prospects that they didn’t know about before.  But one of the big complaints over the years has been all of the information that came to coaches that didn’t match their specific needs.  Kids that were too far away, or too slow, or too short, or didn’t score enough on the SAT.

But now, twenty years after the advent of recruiting services became part of the college recruiting landscape, one Chicago-based recruiting service seems to have figured out how to serve college coaches through technology and expert assistance.

"We’re really trying to take serving college coaches to the next level," says Chris Krause, Founder and President of the National Collegiate Scouting Association (NCSA).  "We have a full-time team of former college athletes and coaches who really understand what recruiters go through in trying to find good prospects for their programs.  We think we’re giving college coaches some tremendous tools to use when they recruit."

Krause’s organization employees nearly 70 people, most of whom are former college athletes.  That gives them a unique perspective into the process, and an understanding of what level student-athletes should be aiming for when it comes to college programs.

"We are really careful to match high school prospects with a NCSA Recruiting Coach that is an expert in their sport and has played in college," says Krause.  "We’re also unique in that each athlete that wants us to assist them has to submit a verified transcript.  That way, when a college coach is interested in one of our pre-qualified prospects, they have everything they need to know to begin the recruiting process."

Three unique features of NCSA have college coaches singing their praises:

• They have a process called "Recruit Match", which allows coaches to set filters for what kinds of prospects they will be sent.  Once they have an athlete’s information in hand, they can view streaming video, get a copy of the athlete’s transcript, and view up-to-date statistical information.  All of this information comes to coaches using the criteria that they have set in the NCSA system, eliminating unwanted prospects flooding their Inbox.
• NCSA’s "Virtual Tryout" feature allows coaches to view extended streaming video highlights of prospects immediately.  Not having to wait for a prospect to send DVD’s of their highlights, or viewing highlights before they contact an athlete, is something that sets this service apart from the others.
• College coaches don’t have to limit their contact with this organization to just online communication.  "We want coaches to call and tell us what they need," says Lisa Meyers, a former Yale Ice Hockey athlete who now runs NCSA’s recruiting coach department.  "We want to take the time to get to know what they want, and how we can funnel the right prospects to them for their consideration."

One end result of NCSA’s attention to detail is this amazing statistic: Only 3% of NCSA athletes that are placed at a college end up transferring or dropping-out, compared with the national average of more than 60% of college students who do so.

Want to give NCSA your own unique RecruitMatch settings and get access to their database of pre-qualified prospects?  Click here or call them at 1-888-333-6846. 

If you are searching for a great start to your 2008-2009 recruiting year, NCSA has a special link (click here) to have you submit your requests so that they can conduct a customized search for a recruit that fits your criteria.