Advice for first visit

DD has been invited on her first visit to her dream school. She is a junior and it is a mid major DI. She also recieved an invite to a top Juco yesterday so that is in the plans as well.

What advice can yall give moe for that first visit? She is doing her homework and already knows a ton about the program and they know her well. Anything we should be prepared to ask? Dress code for a weekday visit?

If you have questions, arm your dd with them to ask.
Let her do the talking. Stay in the background.
You answer questions only if asked directly
Money discussions are about the only time you should be directly involved.
Get an idea of time lines they use for offers.
Dress code to me is always casual but neat. No Jean's. Travel softball warm up or drifit.
Dont discuss any other player, parent, program or coach expect in positive ways (this seems like it is obvious but it happens way more than you expect)
Be honest and be yourself.

Enjoy. This part of recruiting should be fun and exciting. If it isnt, it might not be the right program.

In regards to timeline “when do you expect to be finished recruiting for the class of 20xx?”


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kjmpa said:

In regards to timeline “when do you expect to be finished recruiting for the class of 20xx?”

Click to expand...

Whatever answer you get here will not be true unless it is "Right up until I can't get an incoming player eligible for the season"

We just had one local girl change D1 schools so she can be eligible for this season. There is always a few of these every season. Plus JUCO and Transfer Portal players.

marriard said:

If you have questions, arm your dd with them to ask.
Let her do the talking. Stay in the background.
You answer questions only if asked directly
Money discussions are about the only time you should be directly involved.
Get an idea of time lines they use for offers.
Dress code to me is always casual but neat. No Jean's. Travel softball warm up or drifit.
Dont discuss any other player, parent, program or coach expect in positive ways (this seems like it is obvious but it happens way more than you expect)
Be honest and be yourself.

Enjoy. This part of recruiting should be fun and exciting. If it isnt, it might not be the right program.

Click to expand...

Just to add - make sure your daughter has questions. Coaches love to hear questions.

Regarding dress, every visit we have had has the coach wearing sweat pants. IMO, dress the part you are applying for. I see no need to get dressed up.

We have eaten lunch with the team on all but one college visit. I think, not so coincidentally, these always happen before we had the one-on-one time with the coach. I am guessing the girls text the coach to give their thumbs up or thumbs down. In addition, it lets your daughter see if she likes the girls. Really good selling point.

So.. if the HC does the tour with you, showing you around campus, housing, eating lunch (as Gator5 said above) then they are REALLY INTERESTED.

If the HC pawns you off to an assistant or worse... a manager, then they may not be as interested.

All seriousness. You probably already have an itinerary for your visit. In our experience, the HC will meet with you in the beginning and let you know how the tour will go. They may go with you (this is good) and they may lend you with the normal tour folk (still good). They will probably meet back up with you and eat lunch, tour the practice areas and other sports areas on campus. In the end, they will probably tell you where you stand with them and make an offer. The good ones will spell out what the offer means in terms of dollars and how much all scholarships will affect you and add it all up. Some others will not, and here is where you need to ask for them to be specifics on how much you will need to come up.

One her first visit, my kid hardly said 10 words to one coach the entire visit. (even though we had been to several camps with this school and they knew her from camp and watching her play.) It was kind of a running joke the entire time. In the end, they made the offer to her. On another visit, we knew the offer before we made the visit (it was relayed through our TB coach to us). We left and told the coach that she would call with in 2-3 weeks to let him know.

Message me if you want to know any more specifics that we had. I'm sure there are as many different ways this happens as their are colleges.

Good luck and enjoy the ride. It goes very quickly.

Thanks for all the input. The visit went great. My DD has had this school as one of her top 5 since 7th grade. Getting the full tour was awesome. We met the coaches in their office and then headed out for a campus tour.

One of her teamates was with her and everyone from admissions to the coaching staff made them feel like gold. Several times while walking around campus we "bumped" into people the admissions guide introduced us to the knew DD's name before she was introduced. All in all it was a great day and we know an offer is coming. Before they offer they get unofficial transcripts and run players through the compliance office to insure there are on track to be eligible so we are just waiting on that process to end.