Anyone have some advice on Captain U

[Itaintsoft]

DD is receiving emails from Captain U saying coaches have looked her up/added her and it is asking her to create an account. Is this a scam or viable way to be introduded or noticed. Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Captain_Thunder]

Stay as far away from this piece of crap as you can! It is the biggest waste!
Total Scam!

 

[jpkeating]

Stay as far away from this piece of crap as you can! It is the biggest waste!
Total Scam!

Could not agree more, there are a few tournament that still team up with Captain U. The tournament’s must get a decent kick back for doing it.

 

[Xrayaries]

Captain U is ok to set up a profile. Many coaches do use Captain U to search for athletes. Setting up a profile and seeing an email from a coach costs absolutely nothing. Our family uses www.studentathleteworld.com profile creation is free. You can embed video and images and you can also create a calendar for coaches to look at. All of that is for free.

You have to pay for the other special features and you will be contacted to buy more. They are not pushy and they only send out emails once a month and they all hit the spam folder. They have a ton of great information regarding recruiting as well. Very pleased so far. Coaches seem to get the link to the website without it being kicked to their spam folders.
Be sure to update the Maxpreps profile. Many coaches look at Maxpreps.

 

[Mad Hornet]

Don't

 

[tjsmize3]

DD is receiving emails from Captain U saying coaches have looked her up/added her and it is asking her to create an account. Is this a scam or viable way to be introduded or noticed. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Lol... not sure I would call Captain U a "scam." It does provide a service, however, I agree that the service provided is not very useful or worth the money. It's been about 6 years since I have had any experience with it and at that time it was a great way to get in touch with a ton of D3 schools. You can probably do that just as well on your own for free.

 

[jtdo40]

We had excellent luck using it as one of our tools. We paid for the medium level service and used the website near every day. Was fantastic to research rosters, coaches, campus make up, ect.. Coaches were really good at replying to questions, many times coaches would refer to my Daughter's site to pick up her weekly calendar. She would always forward her schedule to the coaches and include a link to the website. This site is very good when used in combination of other correspondence, telephone calls, camp visits ect. I recommend to use as many tools as makes sens for your situation.

 

[JoeA1010]

Captain U certainly isn't a scam, but it's not something that you should use as your primary recruiting device. As a college coach, I get e-mails often from girls through their Captain U accounts. I think Captain U naturally encourages girls to e-mail coaches through their Captain U accounts and I'm sure it includes an online management system so the girls can monitor the activity. The problem is that when we open these e-mails in the Captain U portal, we either have to respond through the Captain U portal - which means I am not using my e-mail and I have no record of my response - or we have to go to our own e-mail and type the girl's e-mail address from scratch. The other problem with the girls e-mailing through the Captain U website is that, frankly, we don't want to have to click a link to get to the message they send us. And then if the link takes us to a sign-in page or even an error page, forget it, the message will not get read. Captain U is now integrated with Front Rush (recruiting software that many colleges use), but I don't use Front Rush to do my e-mails. We read and send out a ton of e-mail. I have no desire to create extra steps (whether Captain U, Front Rush or anything else) to be able to read or send e-mails. I always tell recruits to e-mail me directly from their e-mail account, not through another website or messaging system.

As a result, I think having Captain U is fine, but maybe use it as a place to store videos, profiles and that type of thing.

 

[JoeA1010]

So I get an e-mail from Captain U this morning. I think it's a weekly e-mail that says you have this many girls interested in your school, this many messages awaiting your response, etc. They call it Activity Summary. I click on the link and instead of taking me directly to the information, I go to a login page, despite the fact that I've logged in to CaptainU in the past, using this computer.

While I ordinarily wouldn't bother to login (already too much of a hassle), I go ahead and login and I am now looking at a blank, white page. I am on Captain U, as the address is this... https://college.captainu.com/college_teams/xxxx/dashboard/. The xxxx is actually a number, but I don't want to give the exact address as girls' private info might be accessed. But anyway, I'm looking at a big blank white page.

This is one good reason why we don't want to bother with recruiting websites. Just e-mail us directly. Much easier all the way around.

 

[Captain_Thunder]

And every parent/girl who had their DD listed on Captain U would get those same Activity Reports saying so many coaches were looking at their profiles in the middle of the night. The service may have a few benefits, yet the business practices of this service sure does seem shady!

 

[DanMaz]

if you want a bunch of unwanted emails that coax you into paying for nothing.... go ahead and do it. me... noway!!! waste of time.

 

[SOFTBALLS14]

Go do the work send your own emails ... call coaches ..... go to camps.... (Now is best time for camps !! )
Get a video done and post on You- tube and send link to coaches you are interested in!!
It can be done.... Easily just takes time and work.... Don't go with a service!
You can do better on your own!!

 

[maddball44]

We had to sign up for it due to being in Recruitfest (I think) several years ago. I don't know, we were able to see some schools that we normally wouldn't target that were viewing her profile or whatever. It did put her in touch with schools like Dartmouth and St. Joe's, ect. Even though she's not going to any of these schools it did start some interesting dialog. However, as Coach Abraham states, we would always email outside of CapU and just state that she was emailing because she saw they showed some interest in her Captain U account. I wouldn't totally discredit it. Just add it to your tool belt.