College Recruiting. Is Softball doing it wrong?

[IRONMAN]

Right, I was more talking about the long arduous, expensive process involved for most. One advantage of AAU basketball is the tournaments are indoors..no waking up at 5 am on a Sat to find out if your pool games have been moved back 3 hours...

oh, yes. Expenses are huge. I always said I could have paid for college with all the travel expenses we laid down.

 

[justanotherguy]

I think you have to give college coaches more credit than that. Heck, I am just some desk jockey and I can look at a MI or a hitter (pitching not so much..have no clue about softball pitching..lol) and have a pretty good idea if a girl can play regardless of the actual results for any given day.

I honestly don't know. My DD will get anywhere she gets based on her bat. She's good at catching and first base, but she's a stud with the bat. She does have bad days though, like anyone. If a coach only watches one game and she doesn't do well, I wonder what they see. This isn't me doubting anything, but we both think she needs to be cranking anything in order to be "noticed".

Example: this past weekend she got to face a JMU committed pitcher. First at bat she struck out on a drop ball after fouling off her rise. Next at bat, she just struck that drop ball to get a single. No power in it at all. Would a coach recognize her ability as a serious power hitter after watching that? Or just see her ability to adjust to seeing something new? I honestly don't know!

 

[_MIA_]

I honestly don't know. My DD will get anywhere she gets based on her bat. She's good at catching and first base, but she's a stud with the bat. She does have bad days though, like anyone. If a coach only watches one game and she doesn't do well, I wonder what they see. This isn't me doubting anything, but we both think she needs to be cranking anything in order to be "noticed".

Example: this past weekend she got to face a JMU committed pitcher. First at bat she struck out on a drop ball after fouling off her rise. Next at bat, she just struck that drop ball to get a single. No power in it at all. Would a coach recognize her ability as a serious power hitter after watching that? Or just see her ability to adjust to seeing something new? I honestly don't know!

I mean if you are just counting on her getting on somebodies' radar from them seeing her for the first time at a game, then sure that might be the case although I would still trust some coaches to be able to recognize a good swing when they see one..I saw Mike Trout get fooled a few times the last time he played against the Sox..swing still looked pretty good to me

But for the most part that isn't how things work, at least from what I have learned on here. You send schools recruiting videos, go to their camps, etc. so if she is doing that and they go out to see her play and she has a bad game I doubt they will cross her off their list..unless of course she displays a bad attitude or something.

 

[erniekru]

I honestly don't know. My DD will get anywhere she gets based on her bat. She's good at catching and first base, but she's a stud with the bat. She does have bad days though, like anyone. If a coach only watches one game and she doesn't do well, I wonder what they see. This isn't me doubting anything, but we both think she needs to be cranking anything in order to be "noticed".

Example: this past weekend she got to face a JMU committed pitcher. First at bat she struck out on a drop ball after fouling off her rise. Next at bat, she just struck that drop ball to get a single. No power in it at all. Would a coach recognize her ability as a serious power hitter after watching that? Or just see her ability to adjust to seeing something new? I honestly don't know!

This is where your DD's travel team organization or manager comes in. The managers are more influential than a single game look. What is your manager doing to help?

 

[IPHAWK#18]

These are the kind of threads I for one joined this forum for. Information is value and I being a first daughter softball chaser needs all of it. I never went through the recruiting process and my wife says no one has VHS tape players anymore so we can't watch her basketball videos. So I'm in a mild panic for my child. I like most of you just want to provide the opportunity for my child to succeed.

We front the money to go to the tournaments, but then are we going to right ones? We go to the camps, but are they the right one? (I have already found some camps that I realized we wasted our time and money at). My DD is starting her sophomore season and I'm being told this is the season she needs to shine. But we can't go to some of the fall tournaments because some start on Friday at 8 am and we are supposed to have a high school district volleyball game that night (nice call TD) these are students first and most are multi-sport athletes. Don't forget basketball season is fast approaching.

It's a lot to take in and a lot to do. We aren't wealthy. I can't fly my daughter to California this weekend and Florida next weekend. She has the desire, ability, mindset and I just want the information to put her in the best spot for her without starting a second mortgage. We do this for her because she loves it and its what she wants to do. I happily pay because I want to watch her enjoy the game she loves. My dilemma is at the end of this rat race, I know that I'm still going to be paying for the larger share of college anyways and I want her to be where she needs to be and want her in front of the people she needs to be in front of.

Sorry for the rant but thank you all for the information you provide keep it coming I'm soaking it up.

 

[canyonjoe]

I think it's easier to recruit girls at the younger ages because they reach their adult size earlier. If you look at HS sports you often see Freshman on the all league teams and even POY. For boys the size difference between Freshman and Seniors is much more significant. You can project but in a sports like football and basketball, the size they grow into makes as much of a difference as ability.

 

[seeballhitball]

I honestly don't know. My DD will get anywhere she gets based on her bat. She's good at catching and first base, but she's a stud with the bat. She does have bad days though, like anyone. If a coach only watches one game and she doesn't do well, I wonder what they see. This isn't me doubting anything, but we both think she needs to be cranking anything in order to be "noticed".

Example: this past weekend she got to face a JMU committed pitcher. First at bat she struck out on a drop ball after fouling off her rise. Next at bat, she just struck that drop ball to get a single. No power in it at all. Would a coach recognize her ability as a serious power hitter after watching that? Or just see her ability to adjust to seeing something new? I honestly don't know!

I think Pattar nailed it. If the coach is already aware of the player, I think they want to see the reaction to the unsuccessful play. Even the best hitters fail 60% of the time but do they sulk on the bench and not cheer on the next batter to pick them up, do they take the offensive failure on to the field. They are there as much to assess how the player would fit on their team. If the player has sent game footage, the coach knows what they can do.

Separately, having done both skills video and game footage with my kids, I much prefer game footage with spot shadow...and it is cheaper. I will say I am glad to be done with the process though as it is a stressful time for the girls.

 

[seeballhitball]

These are the kind of threads I for one joined this forum for. Information is value and I being a first daughter softball chaser needs all of it. I never went through the recruiting process and my wife says no one has VHS tape players anymore so we can't watch her basketball videos. So I'm in a mild panic for my child. I like most of you just want to provide the opportunity for my child to succeed.

We front the money to go to the tournaments, but then are we going to right ones? We go to the camps, but are they the right one? (I have already found some camps that I realized we wasted our time and money at). My DD is starting her sophomore season and I'm being told this is the season she needs to shine. But we can't go to some of the fall tournaments because some start on Friday at 8 am and we are supposed to have a high school district volleyball game that night (nice call TD) these are students first and most are multi-sport athletes. Don't forget basketball season is fast approaching.

It's a lot to take in and a lot to do. We aren't wealthy. I can't fly my daughter to California this weekend and Florida next weekend. She has the desire, ability, mindset and I just want the information to put her in the best spot for her without starting a second mortgage. We do this for her because she loves it and its what she wants to do. I happily pay because I want to watch her enjoy the game she loves. My dilemma is at the end of this rat race, I know that I'm still going to be paying for the larger share of college anyways and I want her to be where she needs to be and want her in front of the people she needs to be in front of.

Sorry for the rant but thank you all for the information you provide keep it coming I'm soaking it up.

My suggestion is if not done already is to have your daughter (and you) decide the type of school(s) she is interested by going to collegeboard.org and filtering down the schools.

Having done that, go to the athletic website fill out the prospect questionnaire to show interest, send introductory email to coaching staff, start compiling game footage or skills video to include links in the follow on emails as you start your one way communication with the school.

Also, think about taking SAT and ACT, spend some of that camp money on prep class if first set of scores don't align with the test scores for the desired schools. Plenty of online free testing as well as they can absolutely help in improving test scores.

As far as the right tournaments, you can see the history of who is attending and I will say going to Zoom in to June or IDT was pretty cool from a fanboy/parent perspective to see all these coaches walking around but if your daughter is writing schools and generally making her interest known, they will come see you play. Of course, if you are writing an east coast school and the schedule comes out on wednesday for some nondescript weekend tourney in the middle of nowhere, they won't be attending. Coaches aren't waiting at the standby counter for emails. The greater the number of teams at a tourney, the easier for coaches to plan as they only have a limited number of recruiting days and want/need to see the largest volume of possible recruits and the further in advance the tournament provides a schedule, the easier on everyone. The lack of notice/lead time to the tourney schedule was one of the most maddening/frustrating things about travel ball.

 

[Lobster Birch]

oh, yes. Expenses are huge. I always said I could have paid for college with all the travel expenses we laid down.

I think I could pay for college just on the money I've spent on ice for the cooler.

 

[CMMom1740]

I always knew that men’s sports commit later than women’s.

I saw today that Iowa State basketball just committed its first 2020. He is a 6’5” point guard from Georgia that had offers from Georgia Tech and Mississippi State. It says in the article that the Iowa State Coach has recruited numerous point guards that went on to play in the NBA so this guy is apparently a top prospect.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say Iowa State softball hasn’t been looking at 20’s for quite some time.

Are we doing it wrong?

Do the men endure what has become a 3-4 year test of endurance and financial stress?

Even with the new recruiting rules we are all falling all over ourselves to get our dd’s committed on September 1, junior year. If you are a ‘20 and haven’t yet been committed, good luck. We willingly participate in a rat race that requires us not only to take younger kids to Colorado, Huntington Beach and Atlanta at minimum every summer, but now if you don’t play 4 MAJOR exposure tournaments IN THE FALL you feel like you can’t compete. The fall is starting to look like a summer season. And we all know that the d1’s cant come on Friday and you probably won’t see them on Sunday. One game on Saturday? Thank you Mr. Tournament Director. Can I pay for an extra game and maybe play it on Saturday?

So the only way this can be done is to pay $3,000 dues or play for a org that hosts its own “exposure tournaments” to feed this beast. The orgs then agree to attend each other’s tournaments in order to make it happen. So we add another weekend of travel here and there. It snowballs. You gotta still play triple crown so you get in the power pools at the good fields in Colorado. So there are more weekends of travel and $900 tournament fees. You gotta qualify for Huntington Beach.

Are we the parents enabling this craziness? What is driving it? The college coaches sure don’t seem to care. They expect you to be there. They expect you to be at their $200 camps mid week between the weekends you are in Chattanooga one week and Kansa City the next (making those up but you get the idea). They expect you to be hitting every day, strength training, getting 4.0 grades and oh “we love multi sport athletes”. Sure thing coach! Easy Peasy!

Even after the commitment process, official or unofficial, you can’t let up. The college coaches expect you to be playing top competition.

The tournament directors don’t care. “Sorry the NCAA created a calendar that means they can’t recruit in fall anywhere but warm climates. Maybe you could get a credit card, build up points and fly. Good luck with that. That will be $900, please. Make sure you are staying in our hotels.”

The travel orgs don’t care. “Oh you can’t afford this? Don’t want to make your entire life about softball? NBD, it’s your future you are throwing away. “

I’m sure that the men’s side is far from easy but it seems like we as parents have bought into some stuff that puts everyone but the players in the drivers seat. Are we the suckers in this deal?

And there's no such thing as travel football! Everyone is recruited out of high school. Yes, they work out year round and I know they do camps, but no travel teams to the tune of five figures per year to get recruited.