CaptainU, the online recruiting network dedicated to soccer players and athletes, is officially launching this week with a few notable new features, most of which provide more attention to end users as a way to further differentiate itself from other online recruiting tools like Takkle and BeRecruited.

For starters, a new piece of software from CaptainU provides online guidance to help players with a useful checklist/schedule for the recruiting process, with tips for things like finding the right school and getting a coach to see you play.

Another way CaptainU is hoping to make its players feel special is a new one-on-one counseling option, where users can have sessions with former NCAA coaches. As I learned from my initial review of CaptainU, NCAA standards are rather important to the site’s CEO Avi Stopper, who is also a former NCAA coach. The entire recruiting platform is NCAA-compliant, offering all users a standardized platform they can be comfortable using.

One feature that private beta users requested was a dynamic player profile option, which enables athletes to more easily link between their CaptainU profile and other sites, such as a team site, as well as to easily provide a useful “front page” to send to coaches, as an athlete can upload their image and video content to their CaptainU profile.

With an online platform for something as life-altering as recruiting, it’s necessary for CaptainU to find ways in which it can provide more individually-oriented features that will help each user feel more special while offering additional value towards the overall CaptainU experience. This will hopefully be scalable and valuable features that help CaptainU stand apart from the crowd, as CaptainU has also informed me of its plans to expand its recruiting platform beyond soccer to all sports.

I asked CaptainU how it plans to scale its counseling feature with the upcoming expansion. The site’s Director of Business Development Michael Farb said “the one-on-one counseling will scale because we already have a network of ex-NCAA coaches in place across all sports that are recruiting experts and are ready to set up time with athletes.” As CaptainU hopes to become more competitive with the other established online recruiting sites, such differentiating features are important.

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