One link. Every coach, sponsor and reporter.

The founder

Tyrus Thomas was cut from his high school varsity as a 5'10" freshman. He grew to 6'7" by his senior year, became SEC Freshman of the Year at LSU and helped carry the team to the 2006 Final Four, went fourth overall in that summer's NBA Draft, and played eight NBA seasons with the Bulls, Bobcats and Grizzlies. He started The Recruiting Assist so the next late bloomer has one page that tells their whole story, and his own profile ↗ is live on it.

Tyrus has since joined Butler Performance as Partner, and The Recruiting Assist is now a Butler Performance platform. Read the announcement.

The challenge

A high school recruit's case is scattered across the internet. Film is on one site, stats on another, the transcript is in a parent's email, and the highlights that matter are buried in a social feed. Every college coach who shows interest has to put that picture together themselves, and most don't. NIL added a second audience on top: the local business or sponsor who wants to know who this kid is off the court, which a recruiting card was never built to answer.

The outreach side is worse. Which schools fit academically, who coaches there, what to say in the first email, and whether anyone wrote back usually lives in a spreadsheet, if it lives anywhere.

What we built

• A public athlete profile that is a real website, not a card: film, season-by-season stats, academics, schedule, intended major, community service, awards, NIL availability and an inquiry form on one scrolling page, with the athlete choosing which sections show
• A link that travels well: copy link, a QR code for showcases and a printable media kit, and the link previews properly when it's pasted into a text message or an email. Night and daylight themes, the visitor's choice
• Contact that can go to a parent: a profile can route recruiting contact to a guardian, with their preferred method and the best time to reach them
• A profile builder with a live preview beside the editor, autosave, and a strength score that names the next thing worth adding
• A school finder across 1,812 schools from Division I to junior college, each scored out of 100 against the athlete's grades, test scores and preferences, with the reasons shown. Saved schools move through a six-stage pipeline from Interested to Committed
• A college coach directory of 7,125 men's basketball coaches from a licensed data set, with contact details shown only to signed-in users, and outreach templates that fill in the athlete's own facts
• One inbox for college coaches, brands and inquiry senders, with inquiries from the public profile landing in the same place
• Analytics that answer "who is watching": profile views, unique visitors, film clicks, inquiries and verified college staff visits. The athlete's own visits are never counted
• A recruiter workspace on the other side: search, a board with four lanes from Watching to Passed, private notes, and a message button

Six kinds of user, one platform

Athletes, parents and guardians, high school and club coaches, college recruiters, brand partners and the platform's own admins each sign in to a workspace built for what they actually do. The admin side loads a new coach list from a CSV file without anyone touching code, because recruiting data changes every season.

What the screens show

Every person in these screenshots is the platform's built-in sample: KJ Ashford is a fictional recruit, and the coaches, messages and activity around him are sample records marked as sample on the page. The schools are real, because a fit score against invented schools would prove nothing.

The result

One address an athlete can put in a bio, an email signature or on a QR code at a showcase, that answers a coach, a sponsor and a reporter at the same time, with the platform behind it to find the right schools, reach the right staff and see who looked. It's the platform and sports work we bring to anyone whose product is a person's whole story.

See it live: Visit the platform ↗ or open the sample profile ↗

The public side

Inside the platform