DIII - Talking softball on campus

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Jan 31, 2014
292
28
North Carolina
DD makes her first (unofficial) college visit tomorrow. High school has a day off, so we thought we'd visit one relatively near home. She's a freshman (2019 grad), and picked a DIII to check out. Seemed like a lower pressure place to "get her feet wet" on the college visit experience, and it's a school that has her interest.

Set up a campus tour, and Admissions lined up brief meetings with a couple of professors in her academic fields of interest. DD emailed the coach about her visit and desire to meet the coach. Everything seems smooth. DD got a nice note from the coach inviting her to observe practice to come and meet her, BUT - said she's not allowed to talk softball to a 2019 HS student.

Is that right? We can't talk softball on the campus?

I spent about an hour last night going over the NCAA site, including the legislation pages for DIII. I found restrictions on off-campus contacts, restrictions on athletic activity on the campus, but I didn't see anything restricting conversation with the coach about softball while on campus. DD's pitching coach (very experienced in getting his pitchers recruited) didn't think there was a restriction for on-campus conversation either.

The coach has no way of knowing yet, but DD's interest right now is less about financial aid or being evaluated for the future, and more about what it's like to balance sport and academics at college. She especially wants to know what it's like to be a coach in college (an interest of hers for a career) and how this coach came to the place she is. DD actually wants to shadow her (or some coach, sometime) around for a day to see what it's like (something she didn't request, nor expects right now).

Can anybody clarify from your experience or knowledge? Can DD talk to this coach on softball related matters while she's on campus? Is there a difference between talking about playing at a school and "interviewing" the coach about her career? Inquiring minds want to know...
 
Dec 23, 2009
791
0
San Diego
DD is playing at a D3 here in SoCal. From all the information she's been provided, the coaching staff is limited to 16 hours "coaching" time during the fall. That's not to say that the players don't get together and do softball related activities - it's just that they cannot be supervised by the coaches without getting into the 16 hours allowed.

If I remember correctly, coaches cannot talk to players about playing for them until the summer of their junior year. Your DD can initiate contact (phone, email) with the coach but anything resembling a conversation about coming to play for the college could be considered a violation until your DD is a junior.

As always, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express and I reserve my right to be totally wrong :rolleyes:.
 
Apr 5, 2009
748
28
NE Kansas
For what it's worth, I have a friend who coaches a small college and she says that it is hard to get excited about players prior to their junior year due to so many who have moved on to bigger schools. She said that early on she wasted a lot of time with little results. Called it the curse of small schools. Nowadays she says sure, come visit but she doesn't get to wrapped up in it if they are a ways out from graduating.
 
Jan 31, 2014
292
28
North Carolina
For what it's worth, I have a friend who coaches a small college and she says that it is hard to get excited about players prior to their junior year due to so many who have moved on to bigger schools. She said that early on she wasted a lot of time with little results. Called it the curse of small schools. Nowadays she says sure, come visit but she doesn't get to wrapped up in it if they are a ways out from graduating.

This is exactly what we figured; nothing was going to get very serious, especially for a freshman visiting a DIII. DD impressed me with her own grasp of the situation, wanting at this point to learn more about what it's like being a coach than she did about playing specifically at this school.

There's no desire to try and force any coach "out of bounds," but if no coach can talk to her about what it's like to be a career coach, it will make it tougher for her to explore the possibilities.
 
Oct 17, 2014
123
18
I agree with abbygale......Freshman year is too early for a D3 to get too involved with a kid.....would even be early for most D2's. Plus there is so much gray area about what and when you can do things with prospects that a lot of coaches are very conservative with their face to face contacts with prospects/parents......and athletic departments want coaches to log every single athletically related contact into their recruiting software. Unofficial visits not set up by the coach can be more of a pain for the coach with everything that is involved as far as time and paperwork. If a coach has a genuine interest in a player, they will make the effort to show the interest. Now if a school is really pushing the large roster sizes for enrollment, then a coach may be all on board with every single kid that shows any hint of interest.
 
Oct 17, 2014
123
18
If she's interested in being a coach, then have her be upfront with the coach as far as wanting to learn more about the profession or job shadowing. Or maybe she can contact a coach in another sport at the college. I remember on career day in high school a D3 head football coach came to speak, and no one was interested in hearing him except for me, because I already knew that was the career path I wanted to follow.
 

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