At SAWUSA we run international sports tours in many sports. Our tours are highly selective – only around 15% of applicants each year are chosen to travel with us. Our athletes come from a large national pool and typically come to us from one of three sources…
- Word of Mouth – Our alumni travelers are responsible for nominating roughly half of the athletes that travel with us each summer. Why is this? Well, our tours are really cool! Once an athlete travels with us they have a great idea of what kind of athlete we are looking for and that personal recommendation usually leads to a great fit.
- National Marketing – We draw a lot of traffic about our unique tours from social media as well as some partnerships with sports events, recruiting showcases, etc.
- Coach Nominations
The first two are pretty straight forward. The third one, well that one can draw out a little ‘passion‘ from athletes and parents. You might have questions like…
- “How does this Coach know me?”
- “I don’t personally know this Coach or haven’t heard of the school they Coach at, so how could they know me?”
- “Is this Coach now recruiting me to their school?”
- “Did this go out to just me or a whole bunch of athletes?”
We use coaches to nominate athletes for our programs. We ask them to send us lists of talented athletes in their sport. This doesn’t mean those athletes automatically make our teams. It means we will invite them to apply and let them know which Coach passed us their name and contact information.
Some coaches send us names of 10 athletes that they all know personally. Some coaches send us a list of 100 athletes that they have in their recruiting list for their program. Some coaches send us 1,000 athletes from a list they got at a recruiting showcase or club tournament. We don’t really care to be honest. We are simply asking coaches to get us some names and contact information of athletes that might be good candidates for our tours. Our application process then narrows those down to find the best possible potential travelers. If you really need to know if you were one of 10 or 100 or 1,000 you are welcome to contact the coach and ask them. Their e-mail, and likely office phone number, is typically in the public domain.
The important thing to remember is the Coach passing your name to us is just the first step. It means you’ve been recommended by a Coach to apply for this international experience. We likely do not know you or your athlete yet. If you choose to apply, then we will get to know you through our thorough application process that involves submitting letters or recommendation, highlight videos, and doing a video interview with our staff. We are looking for not just talented athletes – but also high character athletes that will make great ambassadors of the USA. After you complete those steps (and only if you are a good fit) we might offer you a spot on one of our tours.
It’s as simple, and passion-free, as that! If you are interested in applying to travel please click below to get started. Good luck!