January Thaw!

I know it's February now. However, that still doesn't stop me from being excited that it got into the double digit range above zero for two days in a row!

Did you go outside? I skied all weekend and it was great! (Minus a few face plants because some of the tracks were icy...)

That reminded me of some of the websites I've been exploring lately for college sports recruiting. Most of them charge a nominal fee (under $100) for high school athletes to upload videos of themselves playing their sport and then allow college athletic recruiters to access the sites to view the videos of potential students. Definitely an interesting concept, I thought, even if some of the videos I watched were so shaky they made me borderline ill to watch. :)

I wonder what percentage of top tier athletes are using these, and also what percentage of coaches and other recruiters are watching them. I also noticed that it only covered sports that are considered "major"; hockey was sparsely represented, any snow sports were completely left out and running only had a minor showing- usually of the track and field variety. (Then again, I can't imagine a coach sitting through a video of a 5-10k cross country race!)

Are you using any of these websites? If so, which ones? Have you been contacted by anyone from a college? Or, on the collegiate side... are you a coach using these? Do you know of a coach who uses these sites?

I'm eager to learn more about this... (partially as a coach myself, though there wasn't a place for XC skiing...)