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One of the most interesting things about raising a student athlete is the incredible expectations we place on them. We expect them to excel at their sport while simultaneously meeting the academic standards required for college admission. But there’s an additional expectation that often gets overlooked—they also need to become salespeople.
When student-athletes begin reaching out to colleges and universities, they’re essentially selling themselves to recruiters. Having spent the last two decades building software and managing teams in sales and marketing, I quickly recognized that this process mirrored what I taught sales development representatives about customer outreach.
That realization led me to an idea: why not use a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to support my daughter Ava in her soccer recruitment efforts? So, we started by creating a HubSpot account and reconfiguring it for soccer outreach, which took hours.
However, using HubSpot felt awkward. It’s a Swiss Army knife of CRMs—powerful but filled with tools and terminology that are overwhelming and unessiary for this use case. Ava, and I collaborated using the platform, but at the end of the day, Ava had to send the outreach emails herself, and Hubspot was just too complicated.
This experience sparked the idea for Sendcoach - a email outreach tool for student athletes and parents.
Sendcoach takes the essential components of a CRM and simplifies them for student-athlete outreach. At its core, it’s built on top of the most essential outreach tool: email.
The first critical feature we focused on was email integration. Many recruitment platforms email coaches on behalf of the athlete, making the emails look like they’re coming from a service rather than directly from the student-athlete. This diminishes the personal connection that athletes need to form with coaches.
To solve this, we built Sendcoach as a Gmail plug-in. Gmail is free, widely available, and highly familiar to most people. By plugging into their existing accounts, SendCoach ensures that communication is personal and direct—allowing student-athletes to make genuine connections with college coaches.
Another unexpected benefit of SendCoach is that it helps student-athletes develop professional communication skills. Many students will eventually start their careers in roles that require outreach—like sales or client management—and most of those jobs involve using CRMs. With Sendcoach, they’re not just reaching out to colleges; they’re learning a life-long skill set that will serve them in their careers.
We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who’s tested, used, and supported Sendcoach so far. We built this platform to make the recruitment process easier, more efficient, and more personal for student-athletes and their families.
If there’s anything we can do to improve your experience, please let us know. Thanks again, and we hope Sendcoach helps you achieve your goals!
Ben Carcio - Co-Founder Sendcoach
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