"Players have to know something about the colleges they're contacting," said the DI coach I talked to a couple weeks ago.

"Look," she said, "I get more form letters than you could possibly imagine. Most of them go directly into the trash." Point well taken. Most athletes contact coaches without really thinking about why that school is a good fit.

Put yourself in a coach's shoes: you get hundreds and hundreds of messages from players who say they want to play for you, but they don't know the first thing about your school. It's a huge turnoff.

By contrast, the coach told me, there are players who know everything about her college. "They know what our academic strengths are, they know where our players come from, and who's graduating." What a difference an email with that kind of detail makes for the coach! And, in turn, it has huge dividends for the player.

The cool thing is, you can learn a lot of the basics about a school quickly and then use those in your correspondence.

Here are the 3 places to start

1. CaptainU College Profile -- We have lots of information on each college team in America. Start here and get comfortable with the basics like academic standards, size, location, division, tuition, financial aid, and so on.

2. Wikipedia -- Have you read the Wikipedia article for any of the schools on your list? This is a great way to start getting a feel for different academic, social, and athletic aspects of a school.

3. Team websites -- You can learn a ton about a team by going to its website. Read the latest news, check out the roster and see where their players come from, and find out how many players will be graduating the year you'd like to join the team.

Read Part I