If you spend any time on the internet or reading books on college athletic recruiting, you’ll see lists of common mistakes made by families during the recruiting process. The interesting thing is that there isn’t a lot of variation in the mistakes mentioned, it appears that people are making the same college recruiting mistakes over and over. You have to wonder since there are warnings about them everywhere.
Remember when camps were something you did for a week or two in the summer or maybe over a weekend with a scouting troop? High schoolers didn’t go to camps, they worked at them to save up money for college. Not anymore. At least not for high school athletes interested in playing at the college level.
Showcase camps are a convenient, although increasingly expensive, way to get recruited. Given that most college athletes don’t receive scholarships, it can be hard to see the ROI on attending showcase camps. It’s not that showcase camps (or prospect camps) are automatically a waste of money. But they’re certain to be if you make the following mistakes.
This post has been updated for 2022. Specific college baseball camps/showcases are listed by date below. If at all possible, you want the coaches from the college you are interested in to see you play. This is a qualified statement since some colleges will recruit players strictly off video. These tend to be smaller colleges or schools without any recruiting budget. Of course, all coaches would prefer to see you play and baseball camps can be a very effective way to get in front of several college coaches in a very short period of time.