What Coaches Want: From Your Highlight Video

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What Coaches Want: From Your Highlight Video

My name is Amy Patton, and I’ve been a college coach for over 30 years. I’ve coached at both the DI and DIII levels, won league and national championships, and was a head coach within the US system and the pro league. I’ve had a great career, a ton of fun with coaching student-athletes and impacting their lives.

Now, I’m on the other side of things – helping student-athletes with their college process. I have a tiny group that I support, the size of the team each year. And I’m here to help you navigate your college process. I’m sure you have things running through your mind, and right now, I’m going to give you three tips about the top three things you should be thinking about the simplify your life a bit.

In my last video, we talked about what college coaches are looking for from you, and How To Stand Out At Lacrosse Tournaments. Right now however, I’m going to spill the beans on your highlight film.

As I’ve been looking at highlight films for the past seven years in my business, I can be honest and say I haven’t had a single client send me what I would call “a great highlight film.”

There are many companies out there that are putting videos together for all of you. Those people, quite frankly, don’t know lacrosse the way college coaches do.

So here are some key points of what you need to think about in your highlight film.

Tip #1 Length:

  • Length is critical for your highlight video.
  • Too long, and coaches lose interest.
  • Too short, and coaches don’t get a good sense of your skills.
  • Aim for a video length somewhere around 3-4 minutes of high quality clips.

Tip #2 Quality:

  • The quality of the film and clips is essential.
  • Extremely low-resolution or far-away clips are not great selling points for you.
  • Keep our interest with closer and higher-quality clips to keep our attention.

Tip #3 Order:

  • The order of clips you put in your highlight video matters.
  • Don’t simply throw all the clips you have in any order.
  • Create a method to your madness and showcase your skills and specialties in groups.

BONUS Tip:

  • Many times, as I look at a highlight film, people just put highlights together, and they don’t realize it’s the same thing, the same skill over and over. Showcase all you can do; show us you are a multi-talented player.

Final Take Away

There is definitely a “best” way to put highlight videos together. As you think about the three tips I mentioned above, focus on how you can incorporate them specifically into your highlight video.

Since we’ve now talked about How To Stand Out At Lacrosse Tournaments and what coaches are looking for in your highlight videos, we need to move our focus to our next topic, camps.

Strategically choosing camps is essential in terms of saving your time, energy, and money. So many camps out there are what I call “money drains.”

Watch for my next video, where I outline The Most Important Thing About Choosing Camps – and how important that is within your college process.