Lead Scout Handbook
Now that you’re equipped with the understanding of what it means to be a member of the Prep Network family, it’s time to dive into your role.
The responsibility of a Lead Writer goes beyond the standard expectations. After all, you’re now the face of the website in your market. We want you to be successful, and here are the tools to do so in each aspect of the job:
Building Relationships
Beginning on day one, this is the most important aspect of the job.
- Learn your state’s basketball/volleyball/football community and enter the fold. Building the trust and respect of coaches, players, and families is invaluable.
- While in the gym or at the field, dedicate time to shaking hands and becoming friendly with coaches — those who coach college, club, and high school.
- Be a student of the game. Ask more questions and make less statements, especially in your beginning days. College coaches will tell you what they’re looking for in recruits, which bolsters your ability to scout. Something as simple as, “Hey what do you think of #20? Is he good enough for your level?”
- Your eventual ability to speak intelligently about prospects will be an asset. But it will take time to get there.
- Be open to conversation with whoever is around you — coaches, parents, players. Shake hands. Have fun with it. You’re now an ambassador for our company. Connect with people.
Volume of Content
- Be consistent. You don’t need to write 60-90 articles a month. But it does need to be more than 5-10.
- Write to a large audience. Articles with multiple players yield a larger potential audience.
- Mention as many players as possible. New discoveries and small college prospects are as important as the Division I recruits — the basketball community goes to our site to learn about players they’ve never heard of.
- Don’t know where to start or looking for fresh ideas? Check out our High School Season Guide and Grassroots Season Guide. For Dig lead writers, here are the High School Season Guide and Club Season Guide.
Rankings
- Click to learn about the expectations, process, and content associated with Prospect Rankings.
- Unfortunately people are always going to be upset about where their player is slotted. Do the best you can and accept their disappointments as an unfortunate part of this gig.
Database (optional)
Organizing your information is more important than accumulating it. Our most successful and efficient writers develop a version of this.
- This isn’t an aspect of the job that directly correlates to your wallet, nor is it required. Rather, it makes your work more efficient.
- The database begins with an excel spreadsheet of your Prospect Rankings and an evaluation for each player. From there, make it your own…
- College coaches will text you for player contact info. So, make a column for player phone numbers.
- Slide players up and down the rankings on a routine basis (maybe weekly, depending on time of year), which makes the Rankings an effortless task once it’s time to an update.
- Create a tab for AAU program contact information. This opens the possibility for you to run events and increases our chances of adding clubs to the Prep Hoops Circuit.
- Every spring we submit a form for each state to become an NCAA Certified Scouting Service. It’s a headache. Unless you have all of the evaluations already done! Keeping an updated database is truly worth it.