Recruiting roles player, parent, coaches

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Dec 2, 2013
3,410
113
Texas
When you are at an exposure tournament and you look at the college coaches behind the backstop, know this: If your daughter didn’t send them an email and/or go to a camp there, You can assume THEY ARE NOT PAYING ANY ATTENTION TO YOUR DAUGHTER. She might as well be in the dugout.

Those college coaches are probably behind the backstop watching players that reached out to them with their playing schedule OR a well connected travel coach put a bug in their ear to watch a certain player.

Some possible exceptions to above:

1) Pitchers can get noticed sometimes without showing interest in a school if they are really good.

2) Left handed power hitters with speed

3) Catchers that can hit maybe? IDK.

4) A player that just happens to be exactly what the coach needs.

The point? If you drive 4,6,10 hours to an exposure tournament and your dd isn’t doing her part by reaching out, your family is wasting time and money.
Note: Sometimes coaches see a player and can become interested. 2 summers ago our team is playing in the Boulder IDT tourney. We had a pitcher who joined our team after moving to our area who was signed to a college in the state she came from. We were playing in a very heated game. Our team is up by a few runs in the last inning. The pitcher was doing her job, but our infield kept booting the ball and the game was slipping away. Our pitcher was getting pissed, fired up and her competitive spirit was in full force. We end up losing the game, but a D1 coach from the NE ran over to ask me about my pitcher. He was really impressed with how she handled herself. Unfortunately, she was already signed, her academics were not a good match, and the parents were not going to send her so far away. She eventually got a release from her out of state school, and signed with a program closer to home which was a better fit.
 
Last edited:
Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
Absolutely!

I just think parents and players have to assume this is the exception to the rule.

It kind of goes against what has to be preached but I also believe that sometimes recruiting is a complete accident....

Can’t just hope for that to happen though.
 
Jul 16, 2013
4,659
113
Pennsylvania
It's also important for players/parents to realize that college softball is extremely different from travel softball and high school softball. In 99.9% of cases, college softball is the highest level of the sport that athletes will reach. Expectations are higher. Commitment is higher. Distractions are higher. College sports are a grind... It can still be an enjoyable experience, but few are truly prepared for the differences.
 
Jun 22, 2015
12
1
Total truth. If you can't tell me where to start helping you in my role as your coach/recruiting manager, I am not going to be as effective. There are far too many colleges out there for me to know where to focus and frankly it is so much easier to have a conversation with a new college coach I haven't previously met when they contact us or the player or turn up at a game to watch a certain player.

You will see travel coaches who will get players recruited within their own network and that is great if the kid wants to go there (and if you can join a team with a history of placing players in a program you are interested in this could well be a travel team you need to look at). I see way too many girls on these teams who end up at a college because their coach had a relationship and it is not what they actually want educationally (or softball wise) and they never make it through a semester before transferring to a college close to home.
When should this list of 10 be completed by a player? We have 2024 just beginning their freshman year of high school. Should their list be only 10 schools? Should it be more?
 
Dec 2, 2013
3,410
113
Texas
When should this list of 10 be completed by a player? We have 2024 just beginning their freshman year of high school. Should their list be only 10 schools? Should it be more?
Your list of 10 schools might evolve over time. Your list can be 20, but 10 is a good workable number. The school my DD attends was not even on her radar until the beginning of her Jr year. She verballed two months after her first email to the coach. The goal is to find a reason to eliminate schools off your list for whatever reason. The faster the better. Delete one, Add one. or don't add one at all. My buddy's DD had one school on her list, and only attended that school's camp. Never attended any other camps whatsoever. She is now a soph at that school.
 

Strike2

Allergic to BS
Nov 14, 2014
2,044
113
Parent/player: ACT/SAT test early (freshman) and often. Prep for test and do it again. Repeat.

Both parent and players: Test scores can be improved and they are money.

ACT/SAT scores along with grades drive the merit aid, and that can easily get into a bunch of money. In most cases, a good set of scores and grades will bring far more money than anything the kid brings to the ball field. Combine that with athletic and outside scholarship money, and a parent can find themselves handing out little more than spending money to their kid as they walk out the door. Ask me how I know! ;)

Conversely, I know some very good players who are hamstrung by their inability to even break 20 on the ACT. That gets them into a CC or maybe a regional state school, but little beyond that. Worse, low scores often indicate holes in their education that will likely hinder them when they attempt college level work.
 
Nov 5, 2014
351
63
Cast a wide net and narrow from there. I would start working on it.
Couldn't agree more, especially in a post Sept 1. rule change world. If your daughter is entering her freshman year the truth is nobody is certain what the right level of play will be for her in college and with the absence of feedback from college coaches along the way that narrowing of the list is more difficult. My DD is a 2022 so we will have much more information in 1 week than we do today but our process was to try and find schools that were an academic match at all different levels of play. So for us that included schools ranging from lower level P5 schools with higher academic profiles to mid major schools like Ivy and Patriot League to high academic d3 schools. For some, geography is a primary driver of college choice so using this same multiple levels of play within a specific geographic region would work best for them.
 
Oct 5, 2015
91
18
My daughter's list definitely evolved over time as she became more familiar with the schools. Filtering through collegeboard got her to target those that had her major interest and further refinement occurred as test results came in. Similar to Orange Socks, my daughter attends a school that wasn't originally on her list and her expressed interest to visit/tour the school had a lot to do with attending this school.

Coaches receive a lot of emails and your ability to visit their campus shows your intent and is taken seriously by coaches who have limited recruiting time. To be sure, you still need to show you can play but showing more than email interest can weigh heavily in your favor when coaches are looking for reasons to remove potential recruits from the whiteboard.
 
May 27, 2013
2,353
113
My daughter's list definitely evolved over time as she became more familiar with the schools.

Yes, this!! Dd stumbled across her school by looking at the list of schools attending an NFCA Academic camp, researching them, and emailing several of them. Initially, she was considering both D1 and D3 schools but one D1 that showed interest wasn’t what she wanted academically and another one she quickly changed her mind about after a campus visit. I’d say by the beginning of winter last year (junior year) after attending a couple of camps at her top choice, she pretty much had her mind made up (D3 school). It just became a matter of holding out until this summer for the schools on her list to complete the academic pre-reads. That was the most difficult part - putting faith in the process that academically she could get into the school she wanted.
 

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