Footage, footage and more footage

by Steve Cote - the highlight guy

Have you heard this before from recruiters, college coaches, or prep schools? "Send us your highlight video". You are so excited that someone has made contact with you and are genuinely interested in learning more about you and your skills. You immediately think about the game where you dropped 30 points, or shut down the opposing team's best player, or had 20 saves. You can't wait to cut up the film and send it off the person who requested it. But then you think, wait a minute. Did anyone video that game? Did my parents have out the video camera? Did my high school coach have someone in the press box filming?

If you have a big test hopefully you study for more than just the night before. It makes sense that the more you study the better you will do. Same logic holds true for highlight videos. The more footage you have the better your reel will be. Start filming games as soon as you start getting playing time. Build a library of video clips. Ask your parents and high school coaches to film every game. I can speak from experience when I say that I missed some stellar plays of my daughters playing lacrosse and soccer because I did not have the camera ready. It would have been nice to have those clips to add to their highlight videos. On the same token, let's be honest, some games you play better than others. I filmed a 3 game soccer tournament recently. The person I was hired to film played okay but the coach put her in a secondary position because they were short players. She did not get the customary number of touches and so there were not as many highlight clips as she would have liked. It happens. One bit of advice, go through your clips occasionally and log the highlight clip start and stop times. Trying to go through 6 hours of footage in one setting can be quite a challenge. Space out the work.

​The bottom line is you can never have too much footage. Film early, film often and be prepared for the out-of-the-blue "can you send me your highlight video" request!