New Website Matches High School Athletes with College Recruiters

High school athletes overlooked in the recruiting rush by colleges and universities across the country now have a new and inexpensive way to get themselves on the radar screens of college recruiters, and coaches have a new source of athlete data that can open up priceless contacts.
Coast2CoastPrep.com, created by high school football coach Jeff Morris, uses the Internet s wide reach and speed to enable recruiting for coaches, by coaches. Morris, who also has coached at the Division II level, knows the special needs of recruiters who have full-time coaching responsibilities and still must run an effective recruiting operation with very tight budgets.

It’s never an easy job competing with bigger schools that have more money behind them, but when you can’t travel much at all, making contact with good athletes is next to impossible, Morris said. Often, you don’t even hear about them.

Morris says the other side of the equation is that there are many excellent high school athletes who would love to play college sports that are overlooked each year. Some do not fit the profile of Division I schools, but many talented high school athletes prefer to go to smaller schools, anyway.

Coast2CoastPrep.com solves the access problem for coaches and athletes alike, serving as a virtual clearing house for athletic talent. High school head coaches, assistants and position coaches can nominate talented athletes by logging on to the site and complete a brief profile. College coaches then peruse the database to find matches for specific recruiting needs by categories, including position, height, weight, speed, GPA, test scores, awards, and coach s comments, among others.

Recruiters can begin searching the Coast2CoastPrep.com database immediately after registering online, but make initial contacts with potential recruits only through high school coaches. No contact information is posted for student athletes.

There is no cost to coaches, recruiters or athletes, as Morris is developing an advertising base to support the site. The site also offers news articles focused on recruiting as well as message boards where coaches can read or post articles and learn of job opportunities.
Steve Mullins, head football coach at Arkansas Tech University, Russellville, Ark., says being able to contact student athletes through their high school coaches is especially valuable for Division II recruiters. While Division II on-field competition is strong, the schools are smaller, as are the towns where they are located.
Being able to find and talk with the young men to gauge their interest in playing at this level is very important, Mullins said. We don t have televised games, and everything is on a smaller scale, but that very fact appeals to many student athletes who aren t interested in the big-name schools. And one thing more: I know Jeff Morris well, and I know he’s just trying to help kids get to college.

Todd Helton, defensive coordinator for Southwestern Oklahoma State, Weatherford, Okla., says Coast2CoastPrep.com is a good tool that makes our jobs a lot easier. I especially like the fact that the information about student athletes is coming from coaches. Anything we get from a high school coach we value highly.