How to Improve Your College Softball Chances
Whether you’re joining our Revolution coaches at one of our Connecticut Softball Camps or at one of our other locations throughout the country, we know that the goals or each camper could be the same, but they can also be very different. We’re proud to welcome softball players of all skills and ages to our camps in order to reach a new level on the field.
Some attend a Revolution Softball Camp as a beginner and they’re looking for ways to improve so they can have a little more fun while gaining experience. We also get some softball players who are highly competitive and are looking for ways to continue reaching another level because they have aspirations of playing in college. When looking at the number of high school athletes who go on to play varsity softball in college, the percentage is actually quite low. How can softball players improve their chances of getting recorded to play beyond high school? Here are some tips to keep in mind:
Be Coachable
Nobody is perfect, and since softball is a game of failure, nobody is expecting you to be perfect on the field, either. Regardless of how good you are, mistakes will happen, and what’s more important than making the mistakes is actually learning from them. Physical mistakes are forgivable, but mental mistakes are the ones you always want to be learning from and avoid repeating in the future.
As a youth softball player, you’re far from knowing everything about the sport, which is partially why there are coaches there to…well…coach you along the way. They’re older and have just simply experienced more within the game than you have at this point in your life. It’s very easy for a college coach to see if a player is open to getting constructive feedback or if they prefer to not listen and do their own thing.
Know How to Market Yourself
With regard to college recruiting, there are two types of recruits – blue-chip recruits and yellow-chip recruits.
The blue-chip recruits are the best high school players in the country that top college programs recruit. Yellow-chip recruits are everyone else, and instead of waiting for coaches to come and recruit them, they may have to do some level of outreach in order to market themselves appropriately and get on the radar of coaches they’re really interested in playing for.
If you’re not sure how this would work, talk to your college counselor or guidance counselor to get some tips.
What you’ll notice about these two tips is that neither one of them involve your actual on-field skill. Having some level of skill as a softball player is obviously a prerequisite to getting recruited by college coaches, but that’s not the only thing they’re looking for.
Yes, coaches will be judged by how their teams perform on the field, but they’ll also be judged by the type of players they recruit and how the team works together as a unit both on and off the field. They’re looking for the best possible players from an athletic standpoint and also the best possible people from the standpoint of character.
