Most recruiting videos get made for the athlete’s family, not the coach watching them. That’s backwards, and it’s especially backwards in STUNT.
A STUNT coach is often building a roster position by position, in a program that’s only a few years old. She’s not watching for a highlight. She’s watching to see whether your daughter can execute a specific skill at a specific difficulty level, cleanly, on demand.
Structure it by the four quarters, not by “best moments.” Partner stunts first. Tosses and pyramid work next. Tumbling and jumps after that. If your athlete has team-routine footage, put it last.
That order matches how the sport is actually scored, and a coach recognizes the structure instantly instead of hunting through the video to figure out what she’s looking at.
Label every clip with the specific skill and the position. “Extension to full extension, base” tells a coach something. A clip with no label and a caption that just says “stunts” tells her nothing and makes her do work she doesn’t have time for.
If your athlete plays more than one position, which the pathway notes is a real advantage in this sport, show footage in each position she can fill. That versatility is worth demonstrating on camera, not just mentioning in the email.
Show the skill from an angle that actually proves it. A stunt filmed from behind the flyer with three teammates blocking the base’s hands doesn’t prove anything. Film stunting work from the side or from a slight elevation so a coach can see full extension, hand placement, and control.
Tumbling passes need a clean, unobstructed angle straight on or from a 45-degree angle, wide enough to see the whole pass land.
Cut the music, the slow motion, and the crowd reaction shots. Those exist to make a highlight reel feel exciting to watch. A coach isn’t watching for excitement. She’s watching for execution, and production value that slows down the footage or hides the landing is actively working against your kid.
Five minutes, real speed, one skill per clip.
Include a still frame with basic information up front. Name, grad year, GPA, position, current skill level or team level, and contact information, all on screen for the first ten seconds. A coach who wants to reach out shouldn’t have to dig through an email to find your athlete’s grad year.
Keep the whole thing under five minutes. A coach doing recruiting on top of a full coaching load, which describes most STUNT coaching staffs right now, gives a video a fixed amount of attention. Every minute past five is a minute more likely to get skipped.
If there’s a hard choice between showing six skills well or ten skills quickly, show six well. Quality of execution is the entire pitch in this sport.
Send it directly, and say what it is. A short email to the coaching staff, with the video linked and the skill level stated plainly, gets read. The STUNT pathway is worth linking in that same email, honestly, since it lays out the skill benchmarks a coach is checking the video against anyway.
A good STUNT video isn’t hard to make. It just requires resisting the instinct to make it feel like a movie trailer when what the coach actually needs is a clean, labeled demonstration of exactly what your kid can do.