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The successful navigation of the complex and sometimes stressful college recruiting process for athletes requires a number of key resources allowing you to easily communicate your value to college coaches. In addition to a college recruiting highlight video, a comprehensive student-athlete college resume will prove vital in illustrating to coaches your accomplishments, ability and likelihood of success in their program. This college resume should be organized to communicate both your athletic ability and academic fit within a certain NCAA college program. This article will explain the 5 key steps in creating a comprehensive, yet appealing, college resume for your communications with college coaches during the college recruiting and application process.
Step 1: Make Sure to Include Basic Information In Your College Resume
This may seem obvious, but the basic details of the prospective student-athlete are quite often forgotten or not easily visible on a college sport resume. Athletes contacting coaches must ensure that they list the following prominently and at the top of their college resume:
- Full name
- Phone number
- Graduation Year
- GPA
- Playing Position (where relevant)
Including this information prominently will allow the coach to easily identify and follow up with an athlete. This information includes both the sport, identifying information and academic information which are all essential components for the top of the resume, before any further details are explored.
Step 2: Highlight General Athletic Information In Your College Resume
This is often where a college athletic resume deviates from an academic resume in that it prioritizes the communication of your value as an athlete, in your respective sport. This section can be labeled as ‘Athletic Information’ on your resume and includes a variety of basic information relating to your specific sport. Some of this information could include:
- Sport
- Position
- Height and Weight
- Team
- League
- Level
It is important to include all of the relevant and basic information relating to the sport in question in order to communicate your athletic value to the coach in a comprehensive way. This section could also include specific athletic pieces of information such as vertical jump, 40 yard dash speed etc, depending on your sport.
Step 3: Include Basic Academic Information
This section is less important than the athletic sections but is still a vital aspect of the college athlete resume as it shows a coach that you would be admitted and thrive in their program, from an academic standpoint. Coaches don’t want to go through the whole recruiting process with an athlete only for them to fail to gain academic entry into the college because the athlete does not meet the academic requirements of the school. A brief recap of GPA, SAT score and any academic honors or achievements can help to encourage the coach on your fit with their college from an academic standpoint.
Step 4: List Your Best Athletic Honors/ Accomplishments
This section will help you to further strengthen the communication of your athletic ability to the respective coach and will include your best sporting achievements in the respective sport. This could include your captaincy during the 2017 season, your placing first in X sport at Y event, your two goals in the conference finals etc. Listing 3 or 4 of your best athletic accomplishments will go a long way toward demonstrating to a coach what you might bring to the team.
Step 5: Attach Your College Resume Within Personal Communications
Ideally, you will want to attach your athletic college resume as a PDF, or using your Athlete Match Profile Link, in a highly personalized email to college coaches. To learn how to send highly personalized emails read here.
Following the above 5 steps will greatly assist you in creating a highly valuable, concise, athlete college resume which will help you to more effectively demonstrate both your fit and potential worth to college coaches. This college resume is vital for your applications and communications.
Athlete Match allows you to create a comprehensive and visually appealing college resume. Learn more here.
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