Being the crazy, smart, advanced company that we are, we created Coach Packet. This new tool takes the hard copy information and puts it into a online form that is easy to use whether you are the young tech savvy assistant coach or the old school pen and paper coach. Everyone can easily use the unique link from any smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc. Since the inception of coachpacket.com several organizations have begun to experience the value of online packets.

We attended some huge recruiting events, had our big video release conference, as well as signed with many other big organizations.

Hoop [...]]]> Coaches had started approaching Front Rush about creating a tool to help streamline the recruiting process from showcases, tournaments, and a variety of events in order to keep all the information in an online form instead of “big bulky packets”.

Being the crazy, smart, advanced company that we are, we created Coach Packet. This new tool takes the hard copy information and puts it into a online form that is easy to use whether you are the young tech savvy assistant coach or the old school pen and paper coach. Everyone can easily use the unique link from any smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc. Since the inception of coachpacket.com several organizations have begun to experience the value of online packets.

We attended some huge recruiting events, had our big video release conference, as well as signed with many other big organizations.

Hoop Group is the biggest basketball organizations on the east coast for recruiting showcases, tournaments, and training. We established a relationship with them very early on in Coach Packet’s development.

Since our first meeting with them to pitch the idea, we have worked with them on 5 big events. We did some testing at their Academic 100 events. Through these tests we did some tweaks before we got into the Jamfests. We traveled to Pittsburgh, Philly, and Rhode Island to get the online access out to the college coaches that attended and had huge success. At each Jamfest there was at least 200 or more top college coaches or recruiters. We had about 90% of these coaches sign up for the online access at the first event and the buzz just grew for the next two events that we attended. Coaches were already asking if they would have the “same online access” they did at the first event because of “how helpful and easy it was to use”. The coolest part about attending these events was seeing the coaches ditching the bulky paper packets and sitting on the sidelines writing their notes on their smartphones and tablets.

Below is a quote from the President of Hoop Group Rob Kennedy:

“Coach Packet is clearly ahead of the curve. Before long, their technology will be the standard for how all event rosters are delivered to college coaches. The immediate updates, ease of use, tracking capabilities, and technological advantages helped separate our event rosters from our competition. They also allowed college coaches to do their jobs better, quicker and more efficiently. It is a win-win for both college coaches and event operators” – Rob Kennedy

We got the ball rolling with Hoop Group and have now made some other huge partnerships in different sports. Lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in America right now so we went after some of them and landed the big fish. We will be attending the Champions Cup and the Capital Cup both hosted by the IWLCA as well as NXT Sports Summer Slam for Women’s Lacrosse. As for the Men’s side we have signed both MVP Lacrosse tournaments and NXT Summer Slam. We are in many more talks and will update you as we sign them up.

Events are pouring in asking about Coach Packet and how we can attend their events. So keep checking in!

We did a live video conference release last week that you can watch by clicking the link below as well as launching our new website. Check them both out along with a highlight video from events. If you have any questions or events that you want us to attend email me at dschanen@frontrush.com.

Release Conference

Coach Packet Website

Highlight Video

“The MCLA is pleased to announce our partnership with Front Rush” said MCLA President Tony Scazzero. MCLA teams now have a proven recruiting, roster and alumni software provider to manage their communications. We understand the need our teams have in communicating with recruits, roster and alumni and have the utmost confidence in the Front Rush product.”

“We are extremely excited about working with the MCLA. They are a fantastic organization and we are lucky to be teamed up with them” states Front Rush co-founder Brad Downs.

The Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association (MCLA) is [...]]]> February 23rd, 2012 – (Lambertville, NJ) –
The Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association (MCLA) announced that Front Rush will be their official recruiting software through the Summer of 2012. Front Rush is the number one recruiting software for college athletic programs with more than 3,500 clients at over 700 colleges and universities.

“The MCLA is pleased to announce our partnership with Front Rush” said MCLA President Tony Scazzero. MCLA teams now have a proven recruiting, roster and alumni software provider to manage their communications. We understand the need our teams have in communicating with recruits, roster and alumni and have the utmost confidence in the Front Rush product.”

“We are extremely excited about working with the MCLA. They are a fantastic organization and we are lucky to be teamed up with them” states Front Rush co-founder Brad Downs.

The Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association (MCLA) is a national organization of non-NCAA college lacrosse programs. The MCLA currently operates in the US and Canada with 213 teams in two divisions, across ten conferences.

“We love what SportsBoard Scout is up to and we are excited to be a part of  their revolutionary approach to scouting.” said Front Rush co-founder Brad Downs.”

With the SportsBoard Scout program, coaches are able to capture assessment ratings, text notes, voice memos, photos and video, and then sync all of that information with the SportsBoard server to apply analytics and rank the talent by position [...]]]> San Rafael, CA. February 6, 2012. — A new era in recruiting has arrived. West Shore Technologies and Front Rush are pleased to announce a technology partnership that offers college coaches a completely automated process for assessment and compliance/recruiting data management. Coaches who use West Shores’s SportsBoard iPad application to evalutate players can now simply click the ‘Add to Front Rush’ button to seamlessly pass assessed data about any student athlete to Front Rush’s compliance/recruiting database.

“We love what SportsBoard Scout is up to and we are excited to be a part of  their revolutionary approach to scouting.” said Front Rush co-founder Brad Downs.”

With the SportsBoard Scout program, coaches are able to capture assessment ratings, text notes, voice memos, photos and video, and then sync all of that information with the SportsBoard server to apply analytics and rank the talent by position in highest-to-lowest order.

“We are thrilled to leverage the power of the iPad and bring this new type of technology to decades-old paper-driven processes in sports,” said Gregg Jacobs, founder of West Shore Technologies. “This partnership eliminates a lot of time coaches spend manually entering data into Front Rush, which will allow them to spend more time focusing on coaching.”

Front Rush, the industry leading in recruiting and compliance software, provides easy-to-use and affordable software that spans over 3,500 teams are more than 700 colleges and universities.

West Shore Technologies offers SportsBoard Scout for soccer, basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, baseball, field hockey and rugby and will soon offer it for football.

For more information on SportsBoard Scount, please contact:

West Shore Technologies: (530) 323-0202 or www.sportsboard-win.com

“Coaches are finding talent at their camps or clinics all the time, so why not be able to add those potential recruits to their Front Rush database with one click.” states Front Rush co-founder Brad Downs.

SDI Camps prides itself on excellent customer service and the relationship it builds with each of their clients. Their hope is to take as much of the camp stress away from the [...]]]> Front Rush is excited to announce its newest partner to the ‘Add to Front Rush’ team, SDI Camps. If your program is currently as SDI Camps and Front Rush client, within each campers profile you’ll see the ‘Add to Front Rush’ button. With one simple click, all of that camper’s general information will convert over to your Front Rush account. No more manual entry, exporting and importing. It’s as easy as point and click.

“Coaches are finding talent at their camps or clinics all the time, so why not be able to add those potential recruits to their Front Rush database with one click.” states Front Rush co-founder Brad Downs.

SDI Camps prides itself on excellent customer service and the relationship it builds with each of their clients. Their hope is to take as much of the camp stress away from the coach as possible. With SDI Camps, you’ll get a custom camp website with online registration integrated into the design. They’ll also handle refunds, camp switches and even talk to parents if you’re  to busy.

“We look forward to our newly forged partnership with Front Rush,” says SDI Camps founder Kevin Keckler. “Ultimately we want to coaches to worry about the bigger picture and let us be an extension of their camp staff. Let us help take your camp stress away.”

For more information on SDI Camps, feel free to contact Kevin Keckler at 888.426.1975 or  kevin@sdicorporategroup.com.

January 18th, 2012

“The idea is to make life easier for coaches to search and add their top prospects directly into their Front Rush account. The future of recruiting isn’t importing and exporting data, it’s simple integration that is the future.” says co-founder Brad Downs.

Tennisrecruiting.net is the latest content provider to partner with Front Rush. For more information on Front Rush’s partners, click on the following link, http://www.frontrush.com/web/features/partners.html.

Tennisrecruiting.net is the premier site for junior tennis. Providing tennis coaches with news, rankings, articles, recruit data and much more.

Front Rush provides an easy-to-use and affordable recruiting software that spans over 3,500 teams at over 700 colleges and university nationwide.

Have you missed any important messages sent to you?

Well, its definitely possible due to the rules around Facebook’s “Social Inbox”.

Here’s the story, Coach: Over a year ago, Facebook made some changes to their messaging system that put rules into place for receiving messages from other people on Facebook. The logic was very simple: If a person is your friend, or friend of a friend, then messages that they send you on Facebook will show up in your messages section. If a person is not in the group above, then their message will go into your “Other” folder. The problem is that nobody seems to check their “Other” folder and you are not notified the same way as your primary inbox. So as a result, many messages sent to you go unread.

If you are [...]]]> Have you been checking your Other inbox?

Have you missed any important messages sent to you?

Well, its definitely possible due to the rules around Facebook’s “Social Inbox”.

Here’s the story, Coach: Over a year ago, Facebook made some changes to their messaging system that put rules into place for receiving messages from other people on Facebook. The logic was very simple: If a person is your friend, or friend of a friend, then messages that they send you on Facebook will show up in your messages section. If a person is not in the group above, then their message will go into your “Other” folder. The problem is that nobody seems to check their “Other” folder and you are not notified the same way as your primary inbox. So as a result, many messages sent to you go unread.

If you are a division that allows for messaging to and from recruits, then it is very possible that you have some pending messages from recruits that are weeks, or even months, old. If you are in Division III, where Facebook messaging is not currently permitted, its still worth checking out because their certainly could be some personal messages that you wish you would have seen.

The reverse is true as well. Again, NCAA permitting, messages that you send recruits (on Facebook) will go into their “Other” folder if you are not currently their friend or friend of a friend. Its kinda like the whole spam thing. So it is a good idea to ask recruits to check out that folder as well.

Here’s how to check out your “Other” folder:

1) Go to your messages section in Facebook by clicking the icon at the top of the page.
2) Then in the navigation on the left, there will be an option for “Other”.
3) Click on that, and see if you have messages that you’ve been missing!

“We are pumped to be teamed up with Collegeswimming.com. When the experts in one field team up with experts in another, good things happen.”

The ‘Add to Front Rush’ button is now live in all Collegeswimming.com recruit profiles.

Front Rush provides an easy-to-use and affordable software that spans over 3,500 teams at over 700 colleges and universities nationwide. They are the industry leader in recruiting and compliance software.

Collegeswimming.com provides a database of high school swimmers. Along with providing recruit data to college coaches, Collegeswimming.com contains championship information, competition previews, results, articles, message board and individual records.

These are the emails that coaches send to recruits that have pictures of the university, and school colors and action shots, and more. Coaches love to send them out because they really can pop-out of a recruit’s inbox, especially compared to the standard black & white text-only email.

We think they can be a great recruiting tool when used properly. The key part of the previous sentence is “when used properly”.

As most of you know, we build email templates for coaches as a service (full discloser) and we often times see coaches relying on the template as a crutch instead of using the content of the email to be the true marketing and recruiting message.

Let me explain:

Your content, your written word, your emotions in the text…THAT is what is king. The images [...]]]> Branded email templates are very popular in college recruiting now.

These are the emails that coaches send to recruits that have pictures of the university, and school colors and action shots, and more. Coaches love to send them out because they really can pop-out of a recruit’s inbox, especially compared to the standard black & white text-only email.

We think they can be a great recruiting tool when used properly. The key part of the previous sentence is “when used properly”.

As most of you know, we build email templates for coaches as a service (full discloser) and we often times see coaches relying on the template as a crutch instead of using the content of the email to be the true marketing and recruiting message.

Let me explain:

Your content, your written word, your emotions in the text…THAT is what is king. The images and pictures that surround the template are just the supporting cast. We recently had a coach ask us to take a look at an email that he sent. It was clear that the coach and our design team spent a ton of time on the branding and the pictures and the colors but it was also clear that the coach did not spend anytime on the content of the email. It was almost like “check out how cool my email template is” instead of “here is a really well written email”.

An email to a recruit should be a great email to a recruit regardless if there are pictures and colors and logos. If the email is well thought out and personalized and truly gets across your message then it can be a great email whether it is fully branded or just black and white. In fact, this is a good litmus test for any recruiting emails sent. Is this email still good without all of the colors and branding? Better stated, is this email great as just a black and white email? If it is great as just a black and white email, then it will be really great fully branded.

When a recruit receives your email, they will be impressed with the pictures and logos and colors but they will be recruited by your content. Its your message that is what is important, not the eye of the designer. 10 out of 10 times it is better to send out a well written, well thought out email in black and white, then send out a sub-par email that is fully branded.

We have come across countless coaches who have bravely leaped into the smart phone/tablet/web-app world, but are only utilizing a very small percentage of the capabilities of the respective devices.

For example: You bought an iPad and so far you have just opened Safari and your email program. Or, you have a new Android device and you have used it to make calls, send a text message and maybe browse the web. This is totally fine…you are amongst a large group.

If you’re ready to explore these useful devices a little more deeplly, here are a few tips on how to start learning these devices and becoming, dare I say, “experts”:

1) Try to break it I don’t mean take your device and smash it, but I do suggest you roll up your sleeves and start opening everything. Get in there [...]]]> Technology can be scary.

We have come across countless coaches who have bravely leaped into the smart phone/tablet/web-app world, but are only utilizing a very small percentage of the capabilities of the respective devices.

For example: You bought an iPad and so far you have just opened Safari and your email program. Or, you have a new Android device and you have used it to make calls, send a text message and maybe browse the web. This is totally fine…you are amongst a large group.

If you’re ready to explore these useful devices a little more deeplly, here are a few tips on how to start learning these devices and becoming, dare I say, “experts”:

1) Try to break it
I don’t mean take your device and smash it, but I do suggest you roll up your sleeves and start opening everything. Get in there and click on any icon, every icon and after you open something up, click more into it. At this point, don’t worry about what specific task your trying to achieve…thats not the goal. The goal is to come to the realization that you’re not going to break it. My mother has a Macbook and she is scared to do anything but go to Google in fear of “oh, I don’t want to hurt it”.  Well, she won’t – and neither will you.  As long as you stay away from any “delete” buttons, its ok. Get your hands dirty.

2) Go to the app store and download a game
If your on an iPhone or an iPad, click the “App Store” icon. On an Android? Go to the “Android Marketplace”. Or if on a blackberry, find the “App World”. Once you are in there you will find tons of apps, many of them which are free. Find a game that looks interesting and download it. You will probably have to enter your password, but the game will download locally by itself.  Why games?  Well (1) they are fun, and (2) they often utilize many of the gestures that the devices are capable of so their almost like a crash course in mobile usage.  You’ll learn without even knowing it.

3) Complete a mobile task
Start thinking about what you always wished you could do while on the road or on the field but couldn’t because you needed to be at your desk. Back to the app store: There are hundreds of thousands of apps between the mobile devices. Each app store gives you the ability to browse and search so get in there and start digging around. I wouldn’t suggest downloading an app, but instead downloading lots of apps. Most likely you won’t use them all with frequency so you can always remove them later. In the app stores, you can see what other people have said about the app and you can see screen shots of each as well as a description.

4) Try something new
Once you have a comfort level with downloading apps and navigating your device, start over and try something new. Its very easy to fall into a routine (or trap) of utilizing these devices for just a few specific actions. The problem with that is pure under utilization. Every few months, many of the mobile devices have software upgrades that give them much more potential (the first couple of iterations of the iPhone did not have cut & paste). Every day, apps that you downloaded will have updates with new features. Every day, new apps are released!

5) Keep it to yourself
If you let your 10 your old son/daughter/nephew/niece/etc. use your mobile device…you will never see it again. Trust me on this one.

We’re asking you to push your limits of comfort and then we’re asking you to refine from what you have learned. Technology is ever evolving and it can be tough to keep up with. The best way to do so is to “get your fearless hands dirty”.