Emails – One changed everything 1. I sent over 1400 emails from freshman year in high school until I verbally committed.  One single email changed my recruiting outlook dramatically. 2.  After Sep 1 through the fall recruiting season, I received personal responses to only 5 emails out of about 200 sent.  5 out of 200 isn’t great, and before Sep 1, I can’t know how many of my emails were actually read. I had a method to see if a coach clicked on my linked videos from YouTube views and my success rate with video views was about the same. 3. That sounds depressing, and emails were a lot of work, but given that my team only attracted coaches to fields at PGF or Alliance Nationals, my family just dove in to help to try to get a coach to attend a game.  My dad helped me with templates and then I’d personalize each email in some way depending on the school. 4. After a tournament, he would gather my stats Sunday night and put together a video.  For the next few nights, we would send out 5-10 emails per night to the 20-25 schools I was targeting.  I targeted schools that were high academic and/or on the west coast.  I had my 5-10 that were a reach, 5-10 that were more reasonable, and then another 5 or so at lower divisions that still met my high academic criteria. Then we’d send out another message with game times for the upcoming tournament. 5. Success Story – After Sep 1, I felt defeated that all this work at camps, social media, and emails had not resulted in a single phone call. Emails were the last thing I wanted to send.  It just sucks to send something out and get no response.  I started to cross schools off my email list if they weren’t communicating interest.  Going into the fall recruiting window, I had no real interest and our first showcase tournament was coming up in Phoenix.  I had not heard anything from GCU after quite a few messages and had crossed them off my list.  I assumed they weren’t interested since I lived in the state.  We wrote out my emails for the weekend tournament and shut down my computer to go to bed. At the last second, we debated if sending another one to GCU made sense and decided to write a message to Coach Hays. A few minutes later, he sent a brief response “will watch you Saturday.”  I was shocked! It was the first email I had ever sent that turned into a coach coming to watch a game.  Coach Hays watched me pitch and sent another note saying I did well and that he would continue to watch.  A few weeks later we were supposed to play in an Alliance Nationals qualifier. That weekend was the last time coaches could watch in the recruiting calendar, but we were ineligible given the fact that we won the Super Cup qualifier the week before. I emailed Coach Hays to let him know and he immediately called and set me up with another team from AZ coached by Sabrina and Kurt Holland going to Don Battles On in Cali.  I had never picked up with another team, but they had one of his recruits on their team and needed a pitcher for the weekend.  Coach Holland intuitively called my pitches without ever seeing me pitch before and I had a 13 K, 1 hit, 5 inning game against Corona Angels Howard Friday night.  Even though coaches weren’t able to attend until Saturday, some watched on gamechanger and they all mentioned that game when I was on visits getting an offer.  I had games like that before, but no coaches to witness it.  Every school that offered a visit to me watched me play that Saturday and Sunday.  I had never experienced anything like it, having college coaches swarming everywhere. I can’t express my gratitude to Coach Hays and the Hollands enough for helping with that! 6. It’s crazy to think that after all of my work over the years playing softball, one email out of 1400 was the deciding factor.  I think my pitching was at the point that I would have been recruited eventually, but I slipped in at the very last part of the second wave of commits and that one email made the difference! @AZRisingAppel