April 17, 2017
For nearly two decades, Headfirst Honor Roll Camps have provided the best showcase opportunity for high-achieving student-athletes to realize their dream of playing baseball at the next level at the top academic colleges in the country. Over 20 years and facilitating the recruiting process of tens of thousands of student-athletes, we’ve developed programming that best equips you as a student-athlete for success in your opportunity in front of over 100 college coaches.
At the core of this opportunity is a carefully crafted showcase format that affords maximum exposure to college coaches – meaning more playing time than any other camp, the maximum amount of coach-player engagement and programming to prepare you to succeed in the recruiting process.
Camp Overview: More Live Playing Time
On the morning of the first day of camp, all student-athletes have the chance to participate in a pro-style workout and showcase in front of all of the college coaches in attendance. This means getting offensive and defensive reps with all 100+ college coaches watching your every move – the first opportunity that you have to get your name circled on a coach’s sheet.
After the morning showcase, we move into our games – because 20 years of conversations with college coaches have told us that coaches want to see you in as many live game innings and pitcher-hitter confrontations as possible to best assess and recruit you at camp. To best position student-athletes to excel, we’ve designed a camp that maximizes live opportunities on the field so that coaches can see you play and coach you. During these games, you’re sharing the field and dugout with college coaches – the perfect place to engage with them face-to-face.
Over the course of the two days, each athlete plays in four games – more than any other showcase. Our in-camp gameplay has been adapted to maximize exposure so that all position players receive at least 2 at bats per game and 8 on the weekend. With 25-30 coaches on each field during each of your games, let’s do the math: 240 opportunities at the plate to get your name circled by college coaches. And that’s before you grab your glove and head to your position.
Based on countless conversations with college coaches and years of experience running showcases, our goal at camp is to simulate a true weekend of college baseball. This gives coaches the opportunity to thoroughly evaluate, coach and engage with you based on your holistic makeup as a student-athlete, picturing you in their program wearing their jersey. We believe that for this to happen you not only need to get on the field and play the game in front of these coaches, but also share the field and dugout with them.
College Coach Engagement
Beyond the simple volume and quality of exposure, Headfirst Honor Roll Camps intentionally create and foster an atmosphere of meaningful engagement between you as a student-athlete and college coaches – it’s one of the defining features of our camps. Our coaches are not responsible for any of the logistics of camp – they don’t throw BP, they don’t hit fungos for the showcase and they do not run stations. They are there to do their job: evaluate and interact with players.
This means that coaches are free to pursue individual conversations with student-athletes throughout camp as they build relationships and recruit you not only as a baseball player, but as a holistic student-athlete to ensure that you’re a fit for their program – and that their program is a fit for you.
Additionally, our precise and efficient system of rotation creates the opportunity for each player to interact with and be seen by every single coach at the event. Over the course of the two-day camp, each prospect will share the dugout and field with approximately 40 different coaches. The rotation of coaches and teams means that for each of your games, you’ll see completely different cadre of coaches on your field and in your dugout – which translates into the opportunity to engage with the absolute maximum number of coaches over the course of your four games.
During each game slot, half of the college coaches are working – while these 50+ coaches are in the dugout actively coaching, evaluating and interacting with players on their field, the remaining coaches will be circulating around the complex assessing and recruiting. On the second day, the coaching groups will switch roles, so that if they were working during a particular team’s games on Day 1, they’ll be roaming during that team’s games on Day 2, allowing them to assess and recruit the players on that team throughout the day.
Knowledgeable and Dedicated Staff
The intentionality and careful development of our showcase and game format comes from our relentless devotion to you as a student-athlete. And this is because of one simple reason: we were you. We understand the process – its ups and downs, challenges and victories – because that same process and journey were ours, too.
Among the full-time members of our Honor Roll team, 13 attended Honor Roll schools and 10 played intercollegiate sports at those schools. The high-achieving, academic-minded student-athlete isn’t a demographic or audience – it’s us. We pursued our dreams and played at Stanford, Georgetown, Davidson, Amherst, Wash U in St. Louis, Lafayette, George Washington, among others. We know the pressure of a showcase environment, so our mission at camp is for you to worry about nothing else besides playing. Showcase events are stressful enough without the added headache of miscalculated team ratio, an empty water cooler, or a disorganized showcase schedule.
At camp, you are always one meaningful conversation away from a life changing opportunity. We acknowledge the gravity of this reality and are grateful to every student-athlete who trusts us in their process and journey.
