Recruiting Tips for Parents Just Starting the Process

GoWest said:
I previously posted this on another thread under the 'college recruiting' tab but I think this is the better thread to seek some insight:

What's the take on the 'new NCAA recruiting rules' with regard to a coach giving a prospect a campus tour while in season (if that even makes a difference) and if doable, are there any limitations as far as amount of time spent on tour, etc.? DD and I have an opportunity for a road trip and want to make the best if it. Thanks in advance for the insight.
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From what I understand, unless your DD is a Junior, she can't technically have an "unofficial" visit with the coaching staff involved. For kids that are younger than Junior year, they are getting around this with "1-day" clinics/camps where campus tours are part of the schedule. My DD was just invited to one and she's a Sophomore, so this appears to be the approach now.
 
Toepoke said:
Check out these links: D1 recruiting D2 recruiting D3 recruiting
As far as I know there is really no time frame if it's an unofficial visit.
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https://usatodayhss.com/2018/what-new-d1-recruiting-rules-mean-for-unofficial-visits

Here is an excerpt from the article
What are the new D1 rules regarding unofficial visits?
The basics of the unofficial visit are unchanged. An unofficial visit is one in which the family foots the bill for a campus visit. Families can still take unofficial visits as early and as often as the student-athletes want. But the new rules prohibit coaches and athletic departments from participating in the student-athlete’s unofficial visit until Sept. 1 of the recruit’s junior year in high school. Previously during an official visit, the athlete could talk to a coach (except during a dead period on the recruiting calendar). The athlete might even receive an early verbal offer. Now, if a freshman or sophomore student-athlete happens to encounter a coach during their unofficial visit, they cannot have any recruiting conversations.

According to the new rules, student-athletes can still receive up to three free home sporting event tickets (prospects from families in which parents are divorced or separated may receive two additional free admissions). If the sporting venue is off-campus, the school can provide transportation within a 30-mile radius.




The basics are completely different. When our family did our unofficials a coach gave the tour, we met with academic advisors, trainers, got to see the facilities, go on the field with the team before a game, talk to the staff and get a general feel for them and the institution. Now you can't do this until your junior year. Who are these idiots that make these rules. If i want to spend the money to visit to see if it's a good fit for my dd, then the staff should be able to spend time with the recruit. Its good for the school to see if the recruit is a good fit for the team and it's good for the recruit to see if the school/staff is a goof fit for them. You can then spread those visits with various schools out over 2 or 3 years. Now the change forces you to do it on your own(visiting without any interaction with the coaching staff/facilities prior to your junior year) or cram it in your junior and senior year. If you want to change something significant change when you are allowed to make verbal offers.
 
It's ridiculous that girls are committing before their Junior year. 14, 15, and 16 year old girls should not be put in the position to make these decisions so early. Let them grow up some more before they need to decide where they want to spend 4 years of their life and what major they want to study. Plus there is no guarantee that coaches recruiting them will even be still at the school by the time the finally get there. In our process we had several coaches tell us that they wish they still had money or spots upon for their 2019 class but they way the system works right now they have to be focused on the 2020 and 2021 classes already.

With the new rules banning in person recruiting discussions really anywhere before the start of the Junior year all that is left the ability to talk to a coach via a phone call initiated by the player. Now girls will be pressured to verbally commit early without ever having an in person recruiting discussion because the top schools will not want to wait unit the start of the Junior year. I personally believe they should just come out and ban any sort of recruiting discussions prior to the start of the Junior year in any format.

Also don't expect that schools will pay for your recruiting trip. It's unlikely since you only get one paid trip to a school (and only 5 trips to D1's). Most schools will want to use this trip during your kids senior year to bring all of the commits in together at once.
 
Simisoccerfan said:
It's ridiculous that girls are committing before their Junior year. 14, 15, and 16 year old girls should not be put in the position to make these decisions so early. Let them grow up some more before they need to decide where they want to spend 4 years of their life and what major they want to study. Plus there is no guarantee that coaches recruiting them will even be still at the school by the time the finally get there. In our process we had several coaches tell us that they wish they still had money or spots upon for their 2019 class but they way the system works right now they have to be focused on the 2020 and 2021 classes already.

With the new rules banning in person recruiting discussions really anywhere before the start of the Junior year all that is left the ability to talk to a coach via a phone call initiated by the player. Now girls will be pressured to verbally commit early without ever having an in person recruiting discussion because the top schools will not want to wait unit the start of the Junior year. I personally believe they should just come out and ban any sort of recruiting discussions prior to the start of the Junior year in any format.

Also don't expect that schools will pay for your recruiting trip. It's unlikely since you only get one paid trip to a school (and only 5 trips to D1's). Most schools will want to use this trip during your kids senior year to bring all of the commits in together at once.
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I agree that offers and commits should not be allowed until Junior year but i did like the flexibility of being able to visit the campus, being shown the facilities and getting to meet the staff on campus at my expense. That way you can spread the cost over several years and you don't have to scramble their junior year to see the various campus's. If you did allow the unofficial visit's from freshman year on but did not allow offers and commits it would be better for everyone. Colleges wouldn't feel like they have to take chances on 8th, 9th and 10th graders and student/players wouldn't have to make a decision before they are prepared or mature enough to make that decision. It seems simple to me but that's just my opinion, i'm sure others would disagree.

I also haven't heard of any woman's soccer program paying for an official "recruiting" visit except in the case that you mentioned, bringing all of the commits together during their senior year. If anyone has had a different experience I would like to hear about it.
 
beachbum said:
I agree that offers and commits should not be allowed until Junior year but i did like the flexibility of being able to visit the campus, being shown the facilities and getting to meet the staff on campus at my expense. That way you can spread the cost over several years and you don't have to scramble their junior year to see the various campus's. If you did allow the unofficial visit's from freshman year on but did not allow offers and commits it would be better for everyone. Colleges wouldn't feel like they have to take chances on 8th, 9th and 10th graders and student/players wouldn't have to make a decision before they are prepared or mature enough to make that decision. It seems simple to me but that's just my opinion, i'm sure others would disagree.

I also haven't heard of any woman's soccer program paying for an official "recruiting" visit except in the case that you mentioned, bringing all of the commits together during their senior year. If anyone has had a different experience I would like to hear about it.
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You can still visit before the start of their Junior year. Just schedule your visit for the schools open visitor day and you will be shown around. The coach just can't be involved. You won't get to see inside the locker room or get a presentation for the coach but you can see enough to know whether you kid would be interested.

We did have one Power 5 D1 school offer to pay the cost of a recruiting trip. This was not a school my dd had written. It was very late in their recruiting cycle and they had very little money left. This school is super expensive. I think they offered to pay for the trip since they had little else left to offer. We declined to visit.
 
I don’t think anyone wants to decide as a freshman or early sophomore, but I suspect bad things will happen if neither the college coach nor the kid can obtain any firsthand knowledge about each other until start of junior year. First, I don't like the extremely compressed timeframe to meet coaches, go on visits, and commit under pressure before roster spots fill up that the NCAA seems to be pushing. Before the rule changes, families at least had time to visit as many mutually-interested coaches and their programs as they wanted for at least a year without running a risk that roster spots would be gone in a span of days or weeks. That's a much more leisurely pace compared to the NCAA's current direction. It also means club coaches will turn even more into de facto agents, and families will need to rely even more on them to identify who is a good fit, whose personalities mesh, and also broker visits the first couple weeks of junior year in anticipation of the inevitable free-for-all starting the first day of recruiting, when kids should instead be focusing on school and the SAT and college coaches on soccer season. There’s already a lot of reliance on club coaches, but at least we were able to meet coaches and form our own opinions. And the new rules haven't seemed to deter kids from committing early, only they're presumably committing now without having ever met the coach or visited the program. How is that a good thing?

I get that freshman year is early to decide where to go to college but, in reality, does it really matter most of the time? The schools that fill all their roster spots with freshman and sophomores are not exactly the types of institutions that are ever a bad idea. Sure, the coach might leave, but that’s surprisingly unusual in girls soccer and, well, s**t happens. Personally, I'd rather run that risk than the risk under the new rules that she can't commit until junior year but blows out her knee as a sophomore and misses out on guaranteed admission to a elite academic school and the money they offered her as a freshman.

There's no perfect solution for everyone, but I think limiting a family’s access to information that is critical to making an important life decision for their kid is a really bad idea, and even worse when you replace it with the judgment of a youth soccer coach. It’s better to face the reality that everyone has a pretty good idea during freshman year of HS what kind of player a girl will be in college, and to have rules that work based on reality. In the elite girls soccer player demographic, kids rarely jump the rails and fail to qualify academically, commit a felony, give up soccer, get fat unexpectedly or develop substance abuse problems. Maybe they don't turn out as great as expected, but rarely do HS freshman commits end up being so bad in college that they aren't helpful. But even if half seriously underperform, a college still has 15 kids on the roster playing as expected or better, and that’s plenty. Which means colleges will always at least scout 8-10th graders whether we think it’s too early or not, and they’ll be ready to drop all their offers the first day of junior year or use, which will inevitably turn into the kind of free-for-all that isn’t good for anyone.
 
End of the Line said:
I don’t think anyone wants to decide as a freshman or early sophomore, but I suspect bad things will happen if neither the college coach nor the kid can obtain any firsthand knowledge about each other until start of junior year. First, I don't like the extremely compressed timeframe to meet coaches, go on visits, and commit under pressure before roster spots fill up that the NCAA seems to be pushing. Before the rule changes, families at least had time to visit as many mutually-interested coaches and their programs as they wanted for at least a year without running a risk that roster spots would be gone in a span of days or weeks. That's a much more leisurely pace compared to the NCAA's current direction. It also means club coaches will turn even more into de facto agents, and families will need to rely even more on them to identify who is a good fit, whose personalities mesh, and also broker visits the first couple weeks of junior year in anticipation of the inevitable free-for-all starting the first day of recruiting, when kids should instead be focusing on school and the SAT and college coaches on soccer season. There’s already a lot of reliance on club coaches, but at least we were able to meet coaches and form our own opinions. And the new rules haven't seemed to deter kids from committing early, only they're presumably committing now without having ever met the coach or visited the program. How is that a good thing?

I get that freshman year is early to decide where to go to college but, in reality, does it really matter most of the time? The schools that fill all their roster spots with freshman and sophomores are not exactly the types of institutions that are ever a bad idea. Sure, the coach might leave, but that’s surprisingly unusual in girls soccer and, well, s**t happens. Personally, I'd rather run that risk than the risk under the new rules that she can't commit until junior year but blows out her knee as a sophomore and misses out on guaranteed admission to a elite academic school and the money they offered her as a freshman.

There's no perfect solution for everyone, but I think limiting a family’s access to information that is critical to making an important life decision for their kid is a really bad idea, and even worse when you replace it with the judgment of a youth soccer coach. It’s better to face the reality that everyone has a pretty good idea during freshman year of HS what kind of player a girl will be in college, and to have rules that work based on reality. In the elite girls soccer player demographic, kids rarely jump the rails and fail to qualify academically, commit a felony, give up soccer, get fat unexpectedly or develop substance abuse problems. Maybe they don't turn out as great as expected, but rarely do HS freshman commits end up being so bad in college that they aren't helpful. But even if half seriously underperform, a college still has 15 kids on the roster playing as expected or better, and that’s plenty. Which means colleges will always at least scout 8-10th graders whether we think it’s too early or not, and they’ll be ready to drop all their offers the first day of junior year or use, which will inevitably turn into the kind of free-for-all that isn’t good for anyone.
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Truth.
 
End of the Line said:
I don’t think anyone wants to decide as a freshman or early sophomore, but I suspect bad things will happen if neither the college coach nor the kid can obtain any firsthand knowledge about each other until start of junior year. First, I don't like the extremely compressed timeframe to meet coaches, go on visits, and commit under pressure before roster spots fill up that the NCAA seems to be pushing. Before the rule changes, families at least had time to visit as many mutually-interested coaches and their programs as they wanted for at least a year without running a risk that roster spots would be gone in a span of days or weeks. That's a much more leisurely pace compared to the NCAA's current direction. It also means club coaches will turn even more into de facto agents, and families will need to rely even more on them to identify who is a good fit, whose personalities mesh, and also broker visits the first couple weeks of junior year in anticipation of the inevitable free-for-all starting the first day of recruiting, when kids should instead be focusing on school and the SAT and college coaches on soccer season. There’s already a lot of reliance on club coaches, but at least we were able to meet coaches and form our own opinions. And the new rules haven't seemed to deter kids from committing early, only they're presumably committing now without having ever met the coach or visited the program. How is that a good thing?

I get that freshman year is early to decide where to go to college but, in reality, does it really matter most of the time? The schools that fill all their roster spots with freshman and sophomores are not exactly the types of institutions that are ever a bad idea. Sure, the coach might leave, but that’s surprisingly unusual in girls soccer and, well, s**t happens. Personally, I'd rather run that risk than the risk under the new rules that she can't commit until junior year but blows out her knee as a sophomore and misses out on guaranteed admission to a elite academic school and the money they offered her as a freshman.

There's no perfect solution for everyone, but I think limiting a family’s access to information that is critical to making an important life decision for their kid is a really bad idea, and even worse when you replace it with the judgment of a youth soccer coach. It’s better to face the reality that everyone has a pretty good idea during freshman year of HS what kind of player a girl will be in college, and to have rules that work based on reality. In the elite girls soccer player demographic, kids rarely jump the rails and fail to qualify academically, commit a felony, give up soccer, get fat unexpectedly or develop substance abuse problems. Maybe they don't turn out as great as expected, but rarely do HS freshman commits end up being so bad in college that they aren't helpful. But even if half seriously underperform, a college still has 15 kids on the roster playing as expected or better, and that’s plenty. Which means colleges will always at least scout 8-10th graders whether we think it’s too early or not, and they’ll be ready to drop all their offers the first day of junior year or use, which will inevitably turn into the kind of free-for-all that isn’t good for anyone.
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Most of this years Freshman commits started the process prior to the rule change. So, it’s not as blind as one might thing. But, you are right, I would rather my DD roll the dice earlier on. Like you said anything can happen.
 
Do my baby is away as a college freshman this year.
They are 5 weeks into soccer/ school and said everyone is getting home sick. Even the local girls. They love the team and even their classes.
I never noticed this when my boys left to school
Is this a girl thing? Anyone else noticing homesickness 4-6 weeks in?
Many tell me it takes about 2 months to get through it.
 
Not yet. My eldest is a freshmen (not playing college soccer) and I have not seen her in 4 weeks (Facetime does not count). It's likely harder on me then her.
 
jojosoccer said:
Do my baby is away as a college freshman this year.
They are 5 weeks into soccer/ school and said everyone is getting home sick. Even the local girls. They love the team and even their classes.
I never noticed this when my boys left to school
Is this a girl thing? Anyone else noticing homesickness 4-6 weeks in?
Many tell me it takes about 2 months to get through it.
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Dropped my daughter off at Cal Poly SLO 4 days ago, seriously home sick and its only been 3 days of being there without parents. Her twin (Cal State San Marcos) handled it by ghosting us, she just killed us in her mind and was fine ... so there is that solution.
 
Kicknit22 said:
Can college coaches respond to emails from Junior prospects at this point, or no?
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Yes, emails can be sent from a college coach starting a prospect’s junior year of high school. Prior to that, email communication from the coach is filtered thru the club coach.
 
MakeAPlay said:
I figured that I would create a place for parents that have been through the process to share insights and answer questions for parents just starting the process or looking ahead to the start of the process. With so much misinformation out there I thought that having a thread to sort it out might be useful.
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Is there an age or year restriction on when a college can talk to a player while they are in High School? New to this. Thanks.
 
vivamexico said:
Is there an age or year restriction on when a college can talk to a player while they are in High School? New to this. Thanks.
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Player and parents can initiate communication at any time. There are restrictions when a coach or school representative can contact a player, but not the other way.
 
espola said:
Player and parents can initiate communication at any time. There are restrictions when a coach or school representative can contact a player, but not the other way.
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Remember, they cannot reply to you, call you back, or talk specifics about your recruiting off their campus until junior year. So a call from your player to them, at a time arranged by your club coach, is really the best way to initiate early contact.

If you do not think your club coach able to arrange this, your player is older than 12, and they want to play in college, change teams to one that can.
 
beachbum said:
I also haven't heard of any woman's soccer program paying for an official "recruiting" visit except in the case that you mentioned, bringing all of the commits together during their senior year. If anyone has had a different experience I would like to hear about it.
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It isn't common but does happen. Depends on your player and the school and what the situation is. There are many pathways and circumstances.
 
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