Losing track of your recruits?  It’s a more common problem than most coaches realize, since many are still using randomly organized file folders and home-made Excel spreadsheets to track the progress of their conversations with prospects.

However, those problems don’t concern the coaching staff of Emory University’s volleyball program. They’ve developed an easy way to track the progress with each recruit. 

Justin Hart, assistant women’s volleyball coach, used  to worry about losing track of communications with his recruits or worry if he was duplicating the other coaches efforts.  Thanks to the popular web-based tracking technology called Front Rush, Coach Hart and the other Emory staff can access their database and know exactly what has been communicated with each and every recruit. 

“The ease of use is what impresses me about Front Rush,” says Coach Hart.  “I cannot only see which staff has contacted a recruit, but also keep track of the amount of contact.”  Hart, whose volleyball team was the 2008 Division III National Champions, also likes the fact that he can send mass emails and see who has opened the emails and clicked through on the links.  That gives he and his fellow coaches a real-time way to gauge the prospect’s interest in their program. 

The coaching staff can track all communications--every telephone call, every email, and every letter--that they have had with each recruit. At the same time, they can see and share all of their communications with each athlete so that all staff members are on the same page. If a member of their staff has spoken with a recruit, they will know exactly what was said as soon as that coach makes an update in the Front Rush system.

Coach Hart and the other staff have access to their data from everywhere.  Since Front Rush is web-based, the coaching staff can access everything on the internet and can see everything that is going on with a particular recruit.  While many of his competitors are still tied to a central server at the college, or software that needs to be loaded on individual computers, Hart has 24/7 access to his recruiting records no matter where he is. 

“We had all seven student athletes we were pursuing commit to our program this past year,” says Hart.  “I’m sure one of the reasons is because Front Rush helped us with keeping track of our communications to them.”