🔥I got an offer from my dream school🔥

written by JOSH GESSNER | The Athletter

In 2017 I was a 'non prospect' throwing 78mph.

2 years later, I get an offer from my

Dream D1 school.

Here’s my story (step by step):

The 4 steps I followed:

1) Become a Desired Product

2) Distribute

3) Showcase

4) Be Relentless

Step 1): Become a Desired Product

AKA “Become good”.

As baseball players we're essentially products in a competitive market place.

Thousands of players are trying to get recruited, and we have to stand out.

How?

We need to identify the qualities that are most in demand.

For the longest time, velocity has been the number 1 sought after metric for pitchers.

Throwing 94mph will always get more opportunities than 84mph.

But.... throwing hard isn't enough.

Becoming a desired product also involves academics.

Solid academics can lead to:

• Playing in the AZ "Academic" Game

• Academic Scholarships

• Academics not being a bottle-neck

Step 2): Distribution

Once you are:

• Throwing at least 90 mph

• Working on your academics

You can start distributing your product.

This basically means creating some interest around you.

As a player in Australia who wanted to play D1, this proved to be a difficult task.

No college scout was flying 20 hours when they can recruit someone a car ride away.

Luckily, the internet does just as good of a job.

After my trip to Driveline baseball I got bullpen video of myself SPRAYING 90-92 mph.

With this video, I cold emailed 100+ college coaches.

I put in effort to make the emails as personalized to the school as possible.

The results were unbelievable.

I got 0.5 replies out of 100.

0.5 because I didn’t get a single email back.

Obviously getting no replies sucked.

Turns out though, 0.5 replies was all I needed.

0.5, because I was put in touch for a recruiting trip for Australian baseball players.

The team comprised of 20-30 promising players.

We were headed to Arizona.

Step 3): Showcase

Initially you have to get into games where scouts will be.

For me, this was the Arizona Fall Academic Game and the Arizona Fall Classic.

Go out, and let it rip.

Showcase the product of your work.

At these showcases I was able to pitch to my fullest potential, leading to multiple offers from schools.

Stanford WASN'T 1 of them.

This leads me to step 4.

Step 4): Be relentless

When I set my sights on Stanford, I did everything I could to get them to come watch me play.

But..... It’s never that easy.

They told us they weren't able to come watch me play.

I don't know why, but this didn’t stop me.

After my recruiting trip I planned an additional trip to visit schools that had offered me.

I put Stanford on the list.

I hadn’t been invited to a visit, I just planned on showing up.

When I landed in the USA for my final trip, I made a call to the Stanford recruiting coordinator from a payphone at the airport.

"Hey can I just come see the campus?"

He said yes.

At this point I had not been offered, and toured the campus as a student.

I don't know if showing initiative helped in the end, or it was just luck.

But a week after my visit I get a call from Stanford, telling me they found some room on the team.

I received an offer from my dream school.

That’s it for today, thanks for reading!