My kid was recruited under the old, old rules (could do unofficial visits at any time (and those could still be hosted, have stuff paid for; basically the school could not pay for transportation there but pretty much everything else was OK), receive verbal offers, etc. (even we, as parents, could attend sporting events on free tickets unless it was a conference playoff/championship or ncaa tournament game). There were no limits on those visits - whether multiple to a specific school or multiple to many schools. She committed early and attended that school despite the coach being fired (or not renewed) only days before NLI signing and even after her soccer profile had elevated in the intervening years (from verbal offer to signing). She spent three seasons there and her last two at a different school.
Her specific story is not important (this is background) but I will say that I wish the current rules kicked in after June 15 of their JUNIOR years (or maybe Jan 1 of their junior years) for exactly the reason
@KingMI says - "payer identification is difficult for coaches" and also because each year in a teen's life contains so much growth and maturity so that the teens themselves have a much, much better sense of what they want in a school, in a major, etc. I can remember my kid being asked at 14, "well, what do you think you want to study?" and I thought that was so silly - she was going to be asked and she had to have an answer but the adults in the room (the coaches and me sitting silently on the other end of the phone call (she handled ALL of them herself) knowing that the question was so meaningless to an 8th or 9th grader (some even had to answer in 7th grade). I've made the point upthread that the experience is different if your kid has an older sibling who went through it - both the expectations on the pitch but also the recruiting dance. I think having your kids face that after 2 years of HS is definitely better than what it was and I'm guessing that many might think, "no way should it be extended to junior year!" but I'd much rather have the kids be closer to adulthood when making one of the most consequential decisions of their lives (no hyperbole here. There are few that are bigger and that is probably the single biggest one to that point in their lives).
I feel for all of you with HS kids right now. Schools are trying to figure out how to manage roster limits, NIL, transfers, etc. That makes it even tougher. And if you have not gone through it with an older child, you don't have the full context to judge the sincerity of coaches, the sincerity of players on the roster whom your kid will meet only to then compete against and even if you have the most mature 15- or 16-year-old, you know that if the conversation were a year later (or even 6 months later), that maturity would be even more developed.
