I feel your pain. There's an email from a college coach in your inbox. You open it, excited to see what it contains, and then, BLAM! It's another coach asking you to attend his college recruiting camp.

This can be pretty frustrating. You've put a lot of effort into emailing coaches and all you seem to get are impersonal responses asking you to spend $500 to attend their camp.

So what do you do?

This may not be what you want to hear, but recruiting camps during the summer are an increasingly important part of the recruiting process. They serve a very important purpose in that they give coaches an extended period of time to observe players -- not just how well they play, but also what they're like as people.

College recruiting camps are also great for high school athletes, because they give you an unrivaled opportunity to show for a coach. They also give you, the opportunity to evaluate the coach and see if you like his style.

Sounds great, right? It is until you see the price tag on these things. They often cost $500 for a 4- or 5-day week. And that's before you factor in transportation.

The bottom line is, you should go to college recruiting camps if you can. But you should pick carefully. If you have 10 colleges on your list, you can't go to them all. There are two key questions to consider:

1. Which coaches need to see you play most? These may be the coaches who are at schools far away, who haven't been able to see you play in a tournament. Or, they may be the coaches at the schools at the top of your list.

2. Where can you get the most bang for your buck? Some college recruiting camps may have coaches from multiple schools on your list. If you can get more than one coach you want to play for to see you at a single camp, that makes your camp tuition go much further.

IMPORTANT: Inevitably, there will be some college recruiting camps that you get invited to but can't attend. Don't ignore those requests. Instead, email the coach and tell him you're flattered by his interest and that you'd love to come to camp, but you can't because it's not in your family's budget, you already have plans during that week, etc.

Be clear that you're still very interested in making his team and want to know what you should do despite not being able to make it to camp.