Tony Wools

Camps- 1.I did not receive an offer from any school that I attended a camp at. 2.I went to WAY too many camps, which negatively impacted my development (not enough rest or time to work on mechanics/strength). In my defense, I did play for a small org and we did not attract coaches to our games until last summer, so camps were my only way to connect. I went to a variety of different level schools. Anyways, let my list sink in 😭: Stanford x 3, USD x 2, UA x 3, ASU, Boise State, UCSB x 2, UCSD, Cal, Nebraska, Princeton, Oregon x 2. Clearly I went overboard 😬, but I knew I could compete at that level and I felt coaches just had to see it. 3. Going to camps at my dream school (at the time)—Stanford—was worth it. The coaches knew me by name and greeted me at camps. Their program skyrocketed during my journey and became way more of a reach for me, but when I started Nijaree Canady was still in high school. Coach Allister was the only coach to reach out after Sep 1 and tell me I wasn’t a fit at the time and wished me luck. It took a minute of her time, and it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I wish more coaches would do this for previous campers after Sep 1. 4. My advice: Only attend a camp if a coach has invited you in some way (a personal invite… not a form letter). I know this can be hard before Sep 1, if your club coach isn’t in communication with the college. If you haven’t been invited to a camp, or highly recommended by a trusted club coach for that school, in my opinion it isn’t worth your time or your parents money to go. There are always exceptions of course, but I think my experience is pretty common. Yes, you’ll learn something from every camp, and I met a ton of different players and amazing college coaches, but at what cost? College coaches need help to sift through 50+ players at a camp, so unless you scream D1 athlete either from your size or your metrics, you need a personal invite or a very strong recommendation. I am 5’3”, with what I considered high end respectable velo for my age at that time and emailed video religiously. College coaches often overlooked me at camps, I assume because of my size (story of my life). My club coaches also did not have a recruiting pipeline to work with, so I didn’t come to camp with a trusted recommendation. Looking back, I needed to hit metrics they see from their current players and I wasn’t there yet. I was close, but betting on me at the time was too risky. 5. Final Thoughts: Coaches use money from camps to help out lower paid or volunteer coaches, etc., so just because you received a letter in the mail or a form email doesn’t mean the coach is interested in more than your $. What I couldn’t see until now is that you have to put yourself in their shoes. If you were going to bet close to $250,000 or more on a player who could impact whether you keep your job, would you pay attention to the person who randomly emails you the week before a camp or the person who was recommended by a coach that has sent players to your school before or better yet the person you specifically invited? Yes it’s a great opportunity to get a higher number than usual reps in front of the coach, but very few people stand out enough on their talent alone. For ME, camps were an epic fail. I hear success stories from others, but I bet those success stories had a lot more going on in the background before the camp to make it a success. @AZRisingAppel @Dadof5appels @matt_stys @BrianAsanovich @brentrincon62 @CoachKayeAZ @eliginnis @AZinthecircle