Coach Edwards addresses a common question he gets from lacrosse goalies: How do I get seen? He explains that being seen is a byproduct of hard work and learning to improve one’s game. If you aren’t ready to play your best, then you don’t even want to be seen. If you are always trying to make yourself better, good things will happen.
0:24 – If you’re asking how to get seen, your focus is all wrong.
0:54 – You can’t control whether you’re seen or not, so trying to impress coaches is pointless.
1:31 – Coach Edwards describes his own journey going to camps and getting seen.
2:21 – Lacrosse recruits younger kids now, so if you’re bad you don’t want to be seen yet.
2:48 – It’s easy to get into camps, change your goal to being the best goalie you can be.
3:47 – Just play the best you can play and good things will happen. You may be seen indirectly.
4:31 – Searching to be seen is a mistake. Being seen is a byproduct of self-improvement.
Introduction
Coach Edwards here with LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com and LacrosseGoalieTips.com. I got an email the other day. It’s that time of year. Camps are starting. Recruiting camps are starting, and the email I got was basically, “Coach Edwards, I’m signed up for all these camps this summer. How do I get seen?”
Asking How to Get Seen is the Wrong Question
How do I get seen? I get this question a lot. “How do I get seen? How do I get noticed?” And my initial response to this is that your focus is all wrong. It’s 100% wrong. If your a goalie who is good enough that you are going to be recruited, you’re going to be on people’s radars. You’re going to be on people’s radar already. The people that ask me, “How do I get seen?” or “How do I get my son to get seen?” or “My daughter,” it’s the wrong question.
Don’t Focus on What You Can’t Control
You’re focusing on stuff you can’t control. You can’t control getting seen. You can go to a camp and you can go to an adrenaline camp, you can go to any camp and get seen, but if you’re bad, you’re going to get seen being bad. So what I’d rather have a kid focus on is the things that he can control and being really, really good. Going to a camp and not trying to impress coaches but to focus on being as good as they can possibly be at that camp. That was my goal every time I went to a camp.
How Coach Edwards Got Seen
Growing up I went to the Cornell camp a couple of times. These were the top camps at the time. I went to Top 205 out in Maryland. I went to the Syracuse Camp because Syracuse was the top team in the country at the time. My goal with these camps wasn’t to get seen. It was to go and be the best goalie I could be and hopefully be the best goalie at the camp. What I did was, my focus was always on how to be the best goalie on the field at any time. I’ll probably talk about that in another podcast. But if I could be the best goalie on the field in the game that I’m in, if I do that enough I’ll be the best goalie. And I did that a lot. I did that a lot to the point that I got recruited by Division 1 schools and my dreams were happening.
If You’re Not Good, You Don’t Want to Get Seen
For a lot of kids now, recruiting, the game of lacrosse has changed in a lot of ways where recruiting happens at such an early age. The idea you can put yourself in places where you can get seen, but if you’re not very good, getting seen isn’t really what you want. You want to be the best goalie you can be.
Getting into the Camp is the Easy Part
It’s easy to get into camps. It’s easy to get into 205s. It takes the help of your coach to get you a really good recommendation and hopefully have a bit of a connection with whoever is involved with that camp. But again, if you’re not very good, getting seen is usually not the issue. What I usually find is that the people asking me how to get seen aren’t very good. They’re not good enough to really be seen. If they’re asking, they’re usually off the radar.
Change Your Focus
The dream for a lot of kids obviously is to go to school and play Division 1 lacrosse, we’ll get into that a little bit later in other podcast episodes, but that really shouldn’t be your goal. Your goal every day you get out there to play, no matter where that is, whether it’s practice with your team or whatever camp you’re going to, getting seen isn’t the focus. It’s playing the best you can play.
Playing Your Best
What happens is, when you play the best you can play, eventually you will get noticed by somebody. It may not be a coach that you’re trying to go play for directly, it may be indirectly. This happens all the time and people don’t think about it a lot. A lot of recruiting happens. It’s who you know, you know? Who do you know that you know? Of all the camps that I went to and the top 205s, the best recruiting that ever happened to me was I played in a random tournament in Lake Placid, NY and some guy saw me play who just happened to know another coach, and that is what accelerated.
Search for Opportunities
So don’t be searching to be seen. Be searching to play the best you can play. Be searching for opportunities where you can learn and improve and then being seen is the byproduct. It’s not the goal. Being seen is the byproduct. It’s not the goal. I hope that makes sense.
Conclusion
If you have any questions about this, feel free to leave me a comment. If you’re on the blog right now leave me a comment below this post. If you’re on iTunes, you can email me at ,CoachEdwards@LacrosseGoalieTips.com but really, getting recruited is the byproduct of being the best goalie you can possibly be and getting noticed is the byproduct. I want to just focus on that. It’s not the goal. So you shouldn’t be calling me or emailing me to say, “How do I get seen this summer? How do I get the…” No. Just play and play and good things will happen, alright? Good things will happen. I get a little frustrated when people ask me, “How do I get seen?” We’ll talk about this more in other podcasts because it’s a big topic and we’re not going to cover it all here, but I hope that makes sense. Be the best goalie you can be and good things are going to happen for you, alright? Talk to you soon.
Coach Edwards here, and good luck.
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