So with the emails out and the contacts made on CaptainU a few replies started coming in. That was good news. In general the replies were positive. But in general the common refrain was you need to come to our summer camp or ID camp. So the summer between my son's Junior and Senior year he attended 5 camps (3 College camps, 1 ID camp and the Region 3 ODP camp).
Now besides just setting up a CaptainU account, we also created a YouTube page with videos of several games and a video highlights. I thought this would be more useful. I thought it would allow coaches to see my son's abilities without having to travel everywhere. I also thought it might extend his reach in terms of colleges that might see him. It turns out... both of these perceptions were wrong. I don't think the videos help very much. Basically every coach wanted to see you play in person. I think they also wanted to have the personal interaction, like a job interview. Therefore, the phase "pay to play" became very apparent.
CaptainU also provides access to their database to coaches. I assume all college coaches have access to these sites for free. What is interesting is that the coaches can create a search criteria and look for players based on these criteria (i.e. right footed, played ODP, GPA 4.0 or higher, etc). I haven't seen the coaches side so these are assumptions on my part. Every time your profile comes up in a search, you get an email. That is good. You can then reach out to the coach and introduce yourself. I thought this might get my son some interest beyond the 9 schools he had chosen. Over the 1 year we have been on the web site, my son's profile has popped up approximately 75 times. So this is good news right? Well not so much. Of the 75 times.... only 8 or so were D1 schools... probably another 15 were D2 schools. The majority were D3, Jr. College or NAIA D1 or D2. Now NAIA D1 is not bad, but we have no NAIA D1 schools in SC. So these were all good distances from home. So the end result, not much help, at least not D1 or D2. When you get a CaptainU message from a NAIA D2 school in Missouri to a player in South Carolina (1000 miles) saying he has some openings and based on your profile you could fill one of them.. no offer, just a suggestion...it seems like he might be having a hard time finding players that want to attend his school.. and that is a significant distance to travel for a maybe.