Profile Craft · Updated 2026-05-20

Recruiting Profile Craft — Brava Research

A D1 women's soccer head coach gets roughly 500 recruiting touches before each cycle's first showcase. The profile that survives that funnel is not the loudest one — it is the one a coach can scrub in 90 seconds and trust. This pillar collects eight research articles on the craft: reel length, clip labels, photos, coach-verified stats, the mistakes that get profiles ignored, a real teardown, the NCSA comparison, and the update cadence.

Where profile craft fits

A profile is the artifact a coach evaluates between your first email and your first phone call. It is the link at the bottom of the message, the page open in a second tab during a film session, the URL a recruiting coordinator forwards to the head coach. Everything else — outreach, showcase invites, the call — orbits this one document. The eight articles below are about making that document worth a coach's 90 seconds.

The eight articles

Each is a standalone read. Start with the question you have today.

Reel Length

How Long Coaches Actually Watch

60–90 seconds is the scrub window. Reels under 3 minutes look thin; over 6 look indiscriminate.

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Clip Labels

The Format That Works

Action · foot · opponent · jersey. The four-field metadata line, and what to never put on a clip.

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Photos

Action Photos vs Film Stills

Why a bad photo hurts more than a missing one. What a coach wants to see at hero size.

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Verified Stats

Coach-Verified vs Self-Reported

Why coaches discount self-reports automatically — and what closes the credibility gap.

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Mistakes

10 Mistakes That Get You Ignored

Generic outreach, stale stats, PDF attachments, lyrics in the reel — the listicle every family should read once.

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Teardown

A Real D1-Bound Forward

Anonymized walkthrough: hero photo, metrics, per-90 stats, reel composition, club attestation, CTA.

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NCSA

Profile vs an NCSA Listing

What coaches actually open in their inbox — and why NCSA's $200/mo subscription doesn't replace it.

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Cadence

How Often to Update

Stats every 3 months. New clips after every ECNL National Event. Full rebuild in March and August.

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One verified link, not a Google Drive folder

A Brava profile is the URL coaches scrub in 90 seconds and trust because the club coach has already vouched for it. $349, lifetime hosting.

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