By: Andrea Emmons
NCSA was proud to attend our second American Volleyball Coach’s Association (AVCA) Annual Coach’s Convention in Omaha, Nebraska in December. I made the trip with Sara Rode (NCSA Senior Member Services) for the three day event. The convention featured close to 60 educational sessions, hundreds of coaches and a wealth of networking opportunities.
One of the best parts of the AVCA Convention is that it coincides with the NCAA DI National Championships and Semi-Finals. It was a big treat to see the best teams in the country compete. Being in Omaha, NE we expected the big match to be against Nebraska and Penn State. We were certainly correct. The crowd was going wild during the match and really started to rattle the normally methodical Penn State team. It looked like Nebraska might take the match until Penn State took over in the last five points of the match. In the final, Penn State easily beat Stanford as expected.
At the convention, Sara and I spoke with many college coaches and passed out prospect DVDs. I have been a Recruiting Coach here at NCSA for over three years, so I know many of these coaches and had the opportunity to meet some of them last year. As expected, we met many new coaches this year as well.
Our response from coaches this year was excellent. We received many praises about our ability to match a college with the right type of student-athlete and vice versa. Coaches were very appreciative of the new search filters, the addition of the personal statement, and our new recruiting profile.
The biggest change NCSA made this year was opening our database to coaches. This allows coaches to search our prospects at anytime and also update their own recruiting preferences at anytime. Sara and I walked many college coaches through our new athletic recruiting network and showed them all of the new features and how they work. Most exciting is that coaches are now able to filter players by grad year and position automatically. We know that coaches are overwhelmed with potential recruit emails, so NCSA makes sure the prospects we send match the specific needs of the coach.
For the second year in a row, NCSA was the only scouting organization of its kind to attend the convention. We take pride in the fact that our relationship with college coaches sets us apart from other services.
