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Youth Sports & Recruiting
Running a soccer club for high school athletes can have as much to do with college placement as it does to do with winning games. Despite this, youth sports organizations sometimes find it challenging to manage their college placement on top of everything else they do for their players. Penn Fusion Soccer Academy, one of the nation’s elite soccer organizations, wanted to streamline their college placement efforts.
Penn Fusion: In The Pursuit Of Excellence
Penn Fusion Soccer Academy, established in 2009, has grown to become the leader in player development in Pennsylvania, combining a top-notch coaching staff, premier facilities, a professional environment with a focus on college placement.
Penn Fusion’s continued growth resulted in a large number of athletes requiring assistance with college placement, adding to the already busy schedules of their coaching staff. Recognizing that college placement is a vital component of their continued success in attracting and retaining players, Penn Fusion set out to find a solution that would allow them to provide their athletes with the assistance they needed, while saving their staff time in the process.
Objectives
Penn Fusion were primarily concerned with finding a complete recruiting solution for their players and their staff, a solution that allowed them to:
> provide their players with all of the recruiting tools they needed to get recruited to their best fit schools
> easily manage all staff and player recruiting efforts
> further cement their brand as a leader in college placement
“We wanted to put our staff in full control of the entire recruiting process, while giving our players the tools and education they need to get recruited.”
Penn Fusion wanted:
> A complete recruiting solution for their players and their staff.
> A streamlined system that allowed staff to easily monitor all recruiting activity in one convenient location.
> A complete set of tools for their players to be able to navigate the recruiting process with little assistance from their staff.
> A recruiting system that was intuitive, easy to use and required little time to set up
> To provide more answers to families, with their limited available time.
Why Athlete Match?
Penn Fusion began evaluating their options, comparing different companies that provided potential solutions to their problem. What attracted them to Athlete Match was:
> Athlete Match has a Total Recruiting System, an all-in-one recruiting solution providing both their staff and players with the tools they need to be successful.
> Athlete Match was the only company in the market that was created by college coaches, with intimate knowledge of how college coaches recruit
> Athlete Match understood the severe time constraints placed on the staff and coaches of youth sports organizations such as Penn Fusion Soccer Academy.
Partnership Highlights
- Saved coaches 10+ hours/ week
- Increase Player Satisfaction
- Increased Player Retention
PARTNERSHIP METRICS
Players – 386
Favorites – 1369
Emails – 1641
Meeting Penn Fusion’s Needs:
A partnership with Athlete Match provided Penn Fusion with the Total Recruiting System they needed to both save time and provide their players with a stronger college placement experience.
> The Athlete Match Customer Support Specialists handled the set up of the Total Recruiting System for Penn Fusion, ensuring minimal upfront effort on the part of the Penn Fusion coaches to get their staff and players up and running.
> A convenient onboarding video and help desk provided Penn Fusion’s 27 staff members and 386 players with all of the information they needed to get started with the system, along with answers to any subsequent questions they had about it.
> Penn Fusion’s 27 staff members were able to easily manage and communicate with all of their players through the system, gaining access to a host of time saving features.
> Penn Fusion’s 1369 players were immediately provided with every tool they needed to get recruited: online resume, college search and information, highlight reel editor, a college coach email system and more.
> All players were provided with the Athlete Match Online Course, educating them on every aspect of the recruiting process, reducing the volume of questions players and parents had for coaches.
Outcome:
> Penn Fusion players continue to use Athlete Match to access all of the tools and education they need to get recruited to best fit colleges.
> The new recruiting system allowed Penn Fusion to save an estimated 10+ hours per week per staff member.
> Staff members saved time on a host of college placement related activities from answering player/parent questions, to giving players suggestions, printing brochures, communicating with and monitoring players.
Penn Fusion was able to provide their players with the tools they needed while saving a significant amount of time in the process.
A quote from Penn Fusion – “Athlete Match has allowed us to provide our staff and players with the total package of convenient, streamlined recruiting tools that we needed.”