When to actually begin the process?

[joemcq51]

I am looking for a few pointers on when to actually begin the recruiting process. Some of the "veterans" on here have been through this already. Hopefully some others may have some useful information also. I will post a few questions I have and see where it goes.

1. If you are thinking your DD is potentially a D2 to lower D1 athelete, when is the right time (grade) to actually start sending emails to her schools of choice?
2. When do you have to sign up for the NCAA clearinghouse?
3. Should DD take ACT or SAT, and when?
4. Are there times we are not allowed to send emails to coaches?

I know there are books out there on the subject. I figured the knowledge base on this site, would be a great way to kick start the process. Besides, DD is not playing any major tournaments until January. Give me something to work on during the holidays.

Thanks in advance.

 

[cshilt]

No later than her freshman year in high school. Constant communication is the key and getting your DD in front of coaches as much as possible. We started going to college camps as early as 12u.

NCAA Eligibility Center (NCAA Clearinghouse)
NCAA Eligibility Center

NCAA Eligibility Guide (NCAA Clearinghouse)
http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/CBSA.pdf

NCAA D1 Recruiting Calendar
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/AMA/recruiting_calendars/2011/I/Softball.pdf

 

[Greenmonsters]

Cathy Aradi's book through the NFCA should be your foundation and will make good holiday reading. From the board here you will get lots of good advice re individual experiences. My DD wanted to be a DIII student athlete and what worked for her was to narrow the schools first by academic fit and non-SB criteria (i.e., size, setting, public, private, etc), then contact the SB coaches. My DD is happy, but what worked for her probably wouldn't work if your goal was D1 or D2 scholarship.

 

[Scl1991]

1. Maximum freshman year, especially to bigger schools, but don't be scared to contact other schools later on as her interests evolve. Cast a wide net, especially if she wants choices. It's very competitive. She can always have her priority list that she concentrates on more.
2. Junior year is fine to sign up.
3. Both. Many schools will accept either, and she may do significantly better on one than the other. Take them by spring of her junior year, which gives her time to re-take if necessary to raise her score.
4. There are restrictions as to when the coaches can answer answer your calls or respond to your emails. You can contact them by email or phone and leave voicemails anytime.

The above was my experience. My DD is now a senior. She always wanted to play D1 ball. We were told to contact 3 types of schools: dream big, stretch/reach and comfort zones. This applied both academically and athletically, since you never know how DD will develop in softball and school during her high school years. She emailed 10 schools in 9th grade and the list grew to an all time high of 50 by her junior year (of which maybe 12 were on her "hard push" list that had all her "wants" and we're academically solid). She had 8 offers between small D1, mid-major and major, not one of which she was emailing during her freshman year. She is fortunate enough to be signing next week with one of her top choices which really didn't evolve into such until early junior year. But the process is getting earlier and earlier at all levels.

 

[3'sDad]

DD is a 10th grader. Academic fit comes 1st, followed by sports (DD has the chance of potentially playing field hockey at the next level). DD's field hockey team does out-of-state pre-season training, so as a team the girls visited GW, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins & Villanova. Two of the field hockey captains have already committed to school: one to Catholic University to play lacrosse and the other to play field hockey for Penn.

By playing on a team with a wide range of under & upperclassman, the team as a whole gains exposure to the collegiate recruitment, application & acceptance process. Its very beneficial to the underclasman to see and experience the process through the eyes of their team mates.

As a family we visited Duke & UNC when in Cary, NC for the PONY end-of-year event. We'd already visited William & Mary. The WW & I are both Rutgers Alums and DD has been to the campus and liked it.

DD's club team played a nice fall schedule and there was an overnight or 2. We took the opportunity to with the tournament down-time to see Lafayette, Lehigh, Muhlenburg, TCNJ, Rider & Princeton.

It appears DD now is leaving more toward the suburban campus, but we'll have to visit Penn, NYU, BC/BU so she gets the City campus flavor.

Much will depend on her PSAT/SAT scores. She took the PSAT 2 weeks ago so we'll see where things shake out. DD knows how critical good grades are to openeing collegiate acceptance opportunites.

 

[Cannonball]

I am looking for a few pointers on when to actually begin the recruiting process. Some of the "veterans" on here have been through this already. Hopefully some others may have some useful information also. I will post a few questions I have and see where it goes.

1. If you are thinking your DD is potentially a D2 to lower D1 athelete, when is the right time (grade) to actually start sending emails to her schools of choice?

We started when dd was a freshman. However, she attended camps earlier in age. We created a recruitment brochure complete with stats after her freshman year and then revised and resent that brochure each year. DD made contact via letters and emails to coaches who she had met. It is important that the player do this and not the parent.

2. When do you have to sign up for the NCAA clearinghouse?

We signed up when DD was a sophomore and so, she had a number. We then made sure to keep it updated with courses she had completed along with grades. It is possible that it would be alright to do so Junior year as well. When we talked to guidance counselors, they advised Junior year but only because they didn't think the academic portion of the required information would include enough information.

3. Should DD take ACT or SAT, and when?

Where do you live? In the Midwest, many if not most schools offer the ACT. The SAT is offered on both coast and down South. Colleges are prepared to work with either scores. We had our dd take the ACT in September of her Junior year to get a feel for where she was. Then, we paid for her to take ACT courses to improve her score. Our high school offers a free ACT test in the Spring and so, she took that and then, took one after school ended. The ACT offers for you to send out the results to a certain number of institutions for free after testing. If you don't take the ACT up on that offer, you'll have to pay $10 for each school you send your dd's info to. However, we decided to not have her ACT scores sent until we had the numbers we thought would give us the scores that would maximize her academic monies.

4. Are there times we are not allowed to send emails to coaches?

You can email them anytime you want. However, they have rules for contacting you depending upons several regulations including your dd's year in school, whether you are on campus or not, contact dead periods ... You need to read the NCAA rules regarding some of this. I know several dads who have made contacts with college coaches and then believe that the schools are not interested in their dds because the school didn't get back in touch with them. They didn't know the NCAA Regulations.

I know there are books out there on the subject. I figured the knowledge base on this site, would be a great way to kick start the process. Besides, DD is not playing any major tournaments until January. Give me something to work on during the holidays.

Thanks in advance.

You need to maximize your recruitment options as well. For example, make a good video and get it on YouTube. Be smart deciding what camps/clinics your child will attend. When/if your dd's team plays in showcase or exposure tournaments, make sure to check out what coaches will be in attendance and let them know that your dd will be there. Personally, I'd have your dd do that. You can take unofficial visits at any time and so, do so at schools that show interest. Make the most of personal contacts. Who does you or your dd know that is playing college ball and will they put a good word in for your dd. We had several contacts at schools in the Ohio Valley Conference and so, dd made contact with them to let them know we would be on campus. Then, they'd be sure to take us on a tour and make sure we met the coach. Good luck with this process. It can be crazy at times.

 

[Indiana]

DD is a 10th grader. Academic fit comes 1st, followed by sports (DD has the chance of potentially playing field hockey at the next level).

Yeah! I played field hockey at Cornell and loved it. It was the perfect mix of academics and athletics. If your DD wants to go really suburban (country!) consider Cornell. They are only 5 hours from Morris County. (my husband, who I met at Cornell, is from Mountain Lakes). I don't know the coach there - the coach I played under left a few years after I did, but I get the alumni e-mails regularly and it looks like a great program.
I attended a collge coaches round-table discussion yesterday - we could get information from and ask questions of some of our local college coaches. They all said that they prefer a personal e-mail with a short video showcasing the athlete's best skills. Also keep e-mailing the colleges you really like. The coaches said that they get over 50 e-mails per day, some much, much more, but if they see the same name cropping up every week they will be more likely to eventually read the e-mail and watch the video.

 

[glf0845]

Getting on the right team and playing in the right tournaments is huge for recruiting. College coaches get hundreds of emails and getting them to open your DD's email is hard if she plays for an unknown organization.
When your DD sends her emails, on the subject line she should put her name, the team name, grad yr and position.
Find out where the girls on the older teams in her organization are committing to, that is another "in" she will have. Make sure her team has a recruiting liaison. A quality skills video is important and send the link with every email she sends. Talking to college coaches is hard for most players and she needs to practice this. Going to college camps will help with that. Make sure after the camp she stays and thanks the coaches and asks them if they need help putting equipment away.

 

[oktwistersgold]

We almost started too late with my daughter, so we were told. Fall of her sophmore year she was still playing on local team that did nothing to help with recruiting, it was more or less the HS team. So we picked up with a couple of teams for the fall and found a great fit. Over the winter we went to tons of exposure camps and clininc, big and small schools, just to get her name out there. After seeing what kind of interest she was getting she had to decide how far she would go, what schools she liked, etc... She said DI and any distance. So we made a video over the winter, put it on youtube, and went to work. Then it was emails to over 200 schools from our recruiting coord and then again from us, with an introduction, video, and resume attached. Every couple of weeks after that it was an email to all the schools giving updates on how school, ball, and life was going. Every tournament played, sent an eamail with video attached. Every holiday was an email to all the schools. Every time an email went out we attached the video and resume! Eventually she had to narrow it down and decide what she wanted in a school. She was fortunate to go from "I just want to play DI" to "I have some really good schools interested in me". Once the Spring showcases started she able to be seen in some live games. This is what really got me scratching my head. She was throwing mid 60's, ball moving a ton, and pitching really well in front of some good DI schools, from our region of the country, and had some interests, took a few visits, but no offers. Played thru the summer and on to the Colorado Fireworks, where she did not have the best showing but was being used as a closer. Our coach gets a call from a top ten DI coach that had sent one email in early spring saying "want to see her as soon as we can". 4 months later he shows up at a game at the Fireworks. watches, and says "I love her, tell her to call me". Bada bing bada boom, wants to see more. So she picks up for PGF with a team, he sees more, invites her for a visit and offers. So now JR and SR will be a little less stressful at our hous. lol

We are in Oklahoma and she will be playing on the West Coast. Usually the kids are going the other way. But I still think the constant emails with a video are what got their attention in the beginning. I'm sure coaches recieve tons of emails each day and how many do they actually open and read? We figured that if they don't know her, THEY WILL. If they constantly see your name eventually it will be stuck in their head. Then we played where we knew the coaches would be. We had to be picky on which exposure to go to, get the most bang for the buck, any BIG tournament was a road trip away. We did what we felt was the right things as far as recruiting. But I also feel a little luck is involved. The one thing she did not do that I think we should have is phone calls to coaches, I think they can get a better idea of your personality, etc...

I am not an expert on recruiting, just sharing our experience this past year. It was stressful, exciting, fun, happy, sad, and I miss it!