Not all summer events are worth your money
Choosing the right opportunities to be seen again
It's that time of year when tournament organizers, camp directors, and showcase promoters compete for your time, attention, and dollars.
"Maximum exposure to college coaches!"
"Over 50 programs attending!"
"Don't miss this recruiting opportunity!"
With limited time and resources, how do you decide which events matter?
The Summer Event Reality
Not all summer events are created equal:
Showcases offer the broadest exposure opportunities, putting you in front of dozens of college coaches at once.
However, this breadth comes with trade-offs. You'll have no direct interaction with coaching staffs, and the level of competition can vary significantly depending on the event.
While showcases excel at getting you noticed, they provide minimal actual coaching opportunities.
College clinics flip this dynamic entirely. Instead of broad exposure, you get deep, direct coaching from a specific program's staff.
This gives you a genuine taste of their methods and philosophy while allowing coaches to evaluate you more thoroughly than they could at a showcase.
The obvious limitation is that you only interact with one program, so your exposure is narrow but deep.
It’s also well worth asking older players in your club which events involved a lot of interaction and hands-on coaching, as this can unfortunately vary wildly.
Multi-coach clinics attempt to combine the best of both worlds by bringing together selected programs for a single event.
You'll get some direct coaching from multiple staffs and exposure to several programs simultaneously.
The challenges are that some might not be staffed by a lot of the schools you like, while the cost of the ones where you can pick which coaches you work with can quickly run into hundreds of dollars.
The Strategic Approach
Each serves a different purpose in your recruiting journey.
Too many players choose events based on:
Which ones friends are attending
Where their club team is going
Which ones promise the most coaches
Which ones are closest to home
The strategic recruit chooses based on:
Which target schools will be there
How many times will these coaches see them
What type of evaluation opportunity exists
How this fits their overall recruiting goals
This targeted approach maximizes your return on investment.
Your needs here might look different depending on whether you’re at the start, middle or end of your recruiting process too.
One Thing That Works
The most successful summer strategy prioritizes quality over quantity.
Firstly, you need to not burn yourself out. It’s better to perform well in a few events, than be average in many.
Secondly, you should consider a mixture of event types. If you only do showcases, you might be seen a lot, but you’re not building any relationships.
But if you only did a handful of college clinics, then the risk is not having enough recent exposure.
Overall, I would argue that coaches at your target schools remembering you well matters more than being vaguely seen by hundreds.
Reality Check
You don't need to attend every event. You don't need to be seen by every coach. You need to be strategic about where you invest your summer time and money.
Quality of opportunity beats quantity every time.
The Field Hockey Recruiting Playbook includes a comprehensive Event Management Matrix that breaks down every major event type, helping you determine which tournaments, showcases, and clinics align with your current recruiting stage and target school list. Subscribers get 25% off this week only with the code TFHRP25OFF