I had no idea it was even allowed to offer scholarships that young?
The list of 2017 verbals is growing every day, and there are already nine 2018s (8th graders) that are verballed, including three to Tennessee!
GoldFastpitch.com
I had no idea it was even allowed to offer scholarships that young?
The more rigorous academic institutions don't make early verbal offers as often because they want to see some grades and/or test scores. Here are the number of early verbals at the schools according to the list on Student Sports.
Illinois: 2 2016 and 3 2017
Cal: 4 2016 and 2 2017
NU: 1 2016 and 1 2017
Stanford: 1 2016 and no 2017 - Kaley Winegarner (2015) was their first to verbal as a soph.
Ive had the coach leaving discussion with colleges before as many times a player commits because of a coach and the relationship with that coach. I have been told the majority of the time the college makes you honor your commitment regardless if the coach is there or not. The coach rarely gets to take their recruits with them in softball.
I'm not sure if you are referring to verbals, but colleges can't do anything to a girl for not honoring a verbal, other than let others know what happened. Until an NLI is signed there is nothing binding either party.
True but dont honor a verbal and see what it does to your reputation, your clubs reputation, your town/hs rep etc.
Academics are the top reason players don't end up at the first school they verbal. We had 2 players on our team, both 2014s, that lost their deals last summer. They both managed to commit to another school this winter, however I doubt either one is getting as much as they had before.I am not an expert on Stanford, but it is my understanding that there is a test and interview process that all students must pass in order to be admitted, so if a player verbals early they better hope they pass the test or they are out of luck!
Academics are the top reason players don't end up at the first school they verbal. We had 2 players on our team, both 2014s, that lost their deals last summer. They both managed to commit to another school this winter, however I doubt either one is getting as much as they had before.
I gathered the info for Stanford and Northwestern from The Common Application and had to resort to Big Future (by College Board) for Cal and Illinois. The SAT ranges for Cal and Illinois are probably a little narrower than I posted because Big Future doesn't provide combined totals. They can't be for the 2014 class because they also had the number enrolled.
Mid-range scores are the middle 50%, so the bottom 25% are below that range and the top 25% are above it. Big Future's breakdowns of Stanford's scores shows the lowest 2-4% of the SAT scores (~100 students) were in the 500-599 range and 1% of the ACT Composite scores (9 students) were in the 18-23 range.
A coach's sway varies by school, sport and/or the coach themself. Coaches have to be careful about it because they also have to worry about below-average students staying academically eligible - especially at schools that don't have an easy major for mediocre students. The flip side is a coach could withhold their sway with Admissions on a borderline student if they're having regrets with them as a player.
Good point and well covered.A valid concern from the student's perspective, too. But its relative - many well above average HS students would fall into the "below average student" category at these and other top academic schools! And even those that don't sometimes will feel that way at times! You won't have time for SB if its a constant struggle to keep up academically. While the SB coach may have scholarship money or have some leeway with admissions, YOU should also be working w/ the admissions people to make sure of the academic fit. Just another reason to choose your school carefully without making SB the primary consideration! In other words, from a career perspective, you want to be able to say I graduated from Stanford and played softball rather than I played softball during the one year I was at Stanford!