Zero to Hero Syllabus

📚Class 1: College Recruiting Crash Course and Creating Your Dream Profile

In this class we’ll go over the big ideas in college recruiting like timelines, definitions, and outcomes of recruiting. We’ll then start developing your dream school profile by helping you figure out what you’re looking for in a school.

Topics Covered:

  1. Timeline and definitions in college recruiting

  2. Outcomes of recruiting: roster spots, academic support, and/or scholarship

  3. Creating your dream school profile in the four key areas

  4. Outlining your basic statistics

Homework: Finish the dream school worksheet with the help of family, friends, and coaches.

📋Class 2: Building a List of Schools That Are Right For You

In this class we’ll take the dream school profile and basic stats you filled out and use them to find schools that make sense for you. We’ll go over the concept of bucketing schools into stretch, good fit, and safety, and then teach you how to use three tools to find schools effectively. We’ll then start filling schools into the school list Google Sheet we’ve built just for this.

Topics Covered:

  1. How to bucket schools into stretch, good fits, and safety academically and athletically

  2. How to determine how many of each type you should have in your list

  3. How to use three different online resources and their filters to find and then research schools that are relevant to your dream school profile.

*All students will submit their profile before and we’ll have some school and conference ideas for you*

Homework: Finish adding schools to your list based on our suggestions and your research until you have 20 schools on the list that you’re interested in.

🗣️Class 3: Communicating with Coaches and Crafting Your Pitch

In this class we’ll go over what standard communication looks like with a college coach. We’ll then discuss what coaches are looking for and how you can make the best impression on coaches. We’ll teach you how to use our communication tracker to assist with this. We’ll finish by teaching you how to develop your pitch for coaches based on your own unique situation, traits, and results. We’ll do this by filling out the pitch document resource.

Topics Covered:

  1. What standard communication with a college coach looks like, and what you should expect in recruiting communications

  2. What are coaches looking for and how do you convey that you’re a good fit

  3. How to craft the most convincing pitch of your recruiting situation possible via our pitch document

Homework: Finish the pitch document that we’ll use to write emails.

💻Pro + Elite Package: Mid Camp Asynchronous Review of School List and Pitch

In this virtual review, we’ll read and comment on your dream school profile, school list, and pitch to make sure they’re optimized and refined and identify additional schools that could be a good fit.

✉️Class 4: Emails, Emails, Emails!

In this class, we’ll go over how to write a convincing email for coaches using the pitch you wrote in Class 3. We’ll go over real life examples of real recruiting emails (good and bad!), and then introduce you to our templates and show you how to customize them based on your own situation. We’ll finish by discussing when you should be sending emails and how they may evolve over time.

Topics Covered:

  1. What makes a convincing (and not convincing!) email

  2. How to use our templates to create convincing emails and text messages

  3. How communication with coaches may change and how to change your communication to match that

Homework: Use the templates to craft 10 emails for the top 10 schools on your list

🗓️Class 5: Your Process, Your Timeline

In this class, we’ll go over how to make a custom timeline based on your academic and athletic situation. We’ll adjust our timeline template to your specific situation, then schedule send reminders to ourselves so we don’t forget key dates. We finish with a Q&A with swimmers from four different schools (Power 4, Ivy League, D2, and D3) to discuss the different timelines that may be present.

Topics Covered:

  1. How to adjust the basic NCAA timeline to your specific situation

  2. How timelines vary between Division 1, Ivy League, Division 2, and Division 3 schools

  3. How to schedule send reminders so you don’t miss key dates in recruiting

✅Pro + Elite Package: End of Camp In-Person Review

In this session, we’ll review all the work you did in our camp. We’ll fine-tune your plan, suggest alterations to your emails, and confirm your timeline.

🎯Elite Package: 3 + 6 Month Reviews

These reviews will be scheduled closer to the date and will act as progress check ins and refining sessions based on the results you’re getting.In this virtual review, we’ll read and comment on your dream school profile, school list, and pitch to make sure they’re optimized and refined and identify additional schools that could be a good fit.