You can commit and de-commtt whenever before you sign the NLI. After you sign it you must agree to it, or ask for an out and the coach can let you, or force the kid to miss a year of eligibility I think. I’m not completely up to date on all D1 rules.
In D3 it is just purely verbal on all ends. The coach offers support, you say you’ll take it. You submit ED app and get it. You are supposed to attend the school and play. Up until the ED result comes out you can do whatever you want, Same with the coach. Once the kid get into the D3 as a recruit he/she can quit anytime or coach can kick you off team. Nothing legally binding or anything.
The Ivies said that if they let you in using a likely letter they expect you to perform for 4 years. If not, they’ll be quite upset with you. Those were the exact words we heard 
@oldchief78 Nor do Ivy or any other D3, which is why I said “or the athlete is admitted to an Ivy/D3 school.”
Definitely a more nerve wracking process for us parents. I think my kid is comfortable with the coach handshake, and I trust the coach too. But as an adult I still will not be 100% secure until I see that letter that says “Congratulations and welcome to the class of 2023”!
@homerdog you are correct about the D1 commitments. The NLI is where they sign a contract with the school. Up until the signatures are on the paper either party can back out without penalty.
The only penalty is to your reputation. I know at least one coach recruiting my S had a reputation for being a bit shady. But most were good. It’s a small world when you get to elite athletics, and most coaches realize that if they break a commitment it will be much harder to get future recruits to trust them. Same with the kids. Commitments do get broken, but you need to be able to explain to other coaches why you broke your prior commitment and why they can trust you not to break one to them.
NESCAC coaches will probably try to use their slots for athletes who otherwise wouldn’t get in. But my understanding is that they don’t have too much leeway on how low they can go (football of course gets more than most others). The general consensus on CC and what my personal conversations seem to confirm is that to go NESCAC, you need to be a great student and a good athlete. To go Ivy, you need to be a good student and a great athlete.
The Bowdoin coach advised he had two slots (full support) for his team. For the same sport, Middlebury advised the same… two slots of full support, 1-2 tips.
Regarding the confidence level of the Bowdoin support, the coach acknowledged the decision always resides with Admissions… but according to the coach, my child’s chances were as close to a sure thing as it gets. Nonetheless, the coach advised we should refrain from announcing our admittance until the official ED1 announcement on December 15th, just in case Admissions balked.
Funny, when I asked the coach if my son should return his recently purchased Bowdoin sweatshirt, coffee mug, and key chain… he said no, he was confident that wouldn’t be necessary.
Bottom line, some coaches (and it can vary even within a single school) will let you know they are extremely confident or not. In our case, Pomona couldn’t give the same level of confidence of Bowdoin. And when expressing his high level of confidence, the Bowdoin coach let us know that the ultimate decision was not his, despite his full support. We respected the honesty of both coaches, and it helped with our decision making.
I know a kid who was indeed recruited for a helmet sport at Bowdoin and had acceptance in hand in December.
Also know a kid who was heavily recruited for soccer (preferred D3, non-NESCAC ), made his ED choice, and at some point after graduation, decided to go elsewhere (also D3, non-NESCAC). No idea what happened there, but it was widely known in his new conference as soon as it happened. I didn’t know that ever happened but clearly it does!
Not sure how helpful this will be to all of you, but one dad told me that the question he asked coaches who were offering support was “if this were your kid, would you let him take the ED risk here with this level of support?” He said the answer often revealed more than the original indication of interest did. Never had a chance to test it myself.
The reality is that in most sports, there will be roster spots filled by kids who did not have the support of a coach during the application process. Sometimes, the coach may be pretty sure the kid will get in without their support, but more often, they are just being forced to make a gamble. As it is, admissions is often not entirely delighted to have the athletic staff doing its work…
@dadof4kids Yes “…to go NESCAC, you need to be a great student and a good athlete. To go Ivy, you need to be a good student and a great athlete.”
@Center S19 has a friend who is a top runner in the state and has perfect ACT and will be on top 1 percent in our class. He has so many options that it’s mind blowing.
@homerdog thats crazy. I do think metric sports are sometimes easier for recruiting. (if they have the times or whatever). Team sports can be tricky: are you on travel? are you on the best travel? do coaches recruit from your team or school and so on.
It’s way easier for timed sports than for team sports. My son is a very accomplished soccer player and had been thinking of playing collegialtley for a long time. He’s been to camps, clinics, showcases, travel tournaments etc. He had gotten some interest from some OK schools, but really not a lot of interest. Then he became the state champion in a weird event and all of a sudden letters pouring in, calls, emails etc. It’s just so much easier for a coach to see a kid in a timed or measure sport and know what they are getting. So if you have the athletic performance combined with academic results it’s a slam dunk.
I bet all of the crazy baseball and soccer dads around here wish they knew about all of that. They would switch their kids to track in a second since it’s their singular goal to get their kid a college scholarship!
@homerdog, Bowdoin definitely follows the rest of the NESCAC with coach support with admissions through tips and slots. If you want background, Bowdoin had a three part series out a few years back about exactly how it works. That said, you may want to touch base with @mcr976, who was told that Bowdoin gives little in the line of admissions support for track recruits.
@gointhruaphase I tried to find those Bowdoin articles a few months ago and when I google them and click on the links, I always get that the page doesn’t exist anymore 
@homerdog, The three part article can be found. Go to http://ephblog.com/2017/10/10/athletic-admissions-details (ironically, this is an article about NESCAC recruiting at Williams). Scroll down the Williams article until you see the reference to the Bowdoin article with the links to parts 1, 2, and 3. Click on the numbers. This will take you to the articles on the way back machine. There are other ways to find it, but this should do it for you.
Until you sign an NLI (first signing in Nov), you are a free agent. Once you sign the NLI, you can still go to any school you want to, but if it is another NLI school (D1, D2 except the Ivies and academies) you either need a release to play and accept scholarship money for 1st year or you have to sit out without money. Even if you sign an NLI, you can go to, and immediately play for, a D3 school.
It was very common for lax and soccer players to verbally commit as sophomores, sometimes even as freshmen. Minds change, opportunities change, SAT/ACT scores are better or worse than expected, which might open up/close some schools. Some D1 schools are notorious for revoking scholarships offered in earlier years. Louisville was one in football. Texas did it when Baylor had the scandal and Texas wanted 4-6 freshman football players. Suddenly 4-6 Baylor recruits became Texas players, so 4-6 Texas recruits had to find other teams, redshirt, or were just out of luck.
And even after the NLI are signed, the recruiting doesn’t stop. My daughter signed her NLI but continued to receive recruiting calls from MANY D3 schools who always pointed out that she wasn’t obligated to play for her committed school and could go to these D3 schools and play.
Are all those announcing commitments not going to those schools? No, most of them will go to the schools they commit to and most coaches won’t pull scholarships.
Thanks Homerdog for the article link
Lots of great information here for anyone wanting to hear about D3 recruiting, especially at NESCAC.
Our experience at Bowdoin was similar to others posted here. “Soft” support (with a positive pre-read) got us nowhere after applying ED. Very disappointing even if the coach was clear that the final decision comes down to admissions. And another aspect which we could not control was that they had 25% increase in ED applications last fall. Who knows how much, but I’m sure it affected those “soft” supported applications to some degree.
I do think most coaches are being as up front as they can be (with exception of the person w/the experience at Williams – that was terrible!!!). They too are trying to see which players are most interested in them and probably get mixed messages from students/parents as well. I tell people it’s similar, but worse, than dating.
Observation: The miscommunication and disappointments usually occur when you are not a top recruited athlete and do not receive admissions support.
So, it’s very important to first find out where you stand. If you are not their top athlete and they are not clearly offering full support, ask questions. Where do I fall on your list of recruits; are you offering to support my application?
I like the advice above of asking “Would you take the ED risk knowing the level of support being given” (and if pre-read was done add, “and with the pre-read results”)?
And, if you are not top recuit, not receiving full support…be open-minded and have another school(s) ready to apply to just in case.
This is why my D3 recruit athlete did not announce to the world she was going to XX school. Without the admissions letter, we did not feel comfortable, with just a positive pre read and coaches nod. Conservative maybe, saving face in case of an admissions Issue, yes. I think at less academically rigorous schools you can maybe make the announcement, but nothing is certain in D3
BTW, some schools did tell m D3 recruit. if ED does not work out at your first choice, get back to us. If we still have space, we will support your ED2 or RD app.
My sense is that for ‘tipped’ or ‘soft support’ athletes, the coach is casting a wide net and has lots and lots of kids on the radar screen and for the most part are interchangeable with each other. The coach needs a bunch of these kids to round out the roster and since some may get rejected, wait listed or accepted but then go elsewhere, he needs to be talking to a lot more kids than he actually needs. So while a coach may be sincere and genuinely interested in your kid, he is interested in a whole lot of others, but doesn’t need all of them. So it’s a bit different than the slotted recruit where the coach is trying to land a finite and small amount of kids at ED. One coach mentioned to us, that they had 15 kids who they were talking to waitlisted, (i’m assuming there were denials and kids who turned down acceptances as well), yet they still had the biggest recruiting class ever coming to campus this fall.
This is all very informative, thank you! Having seen the emails my daughter has received following several pre-reads at NESCAC schools it is much easier to read between the lines in terms of needing coach support, etc. I am wondering if anyone has experience with Patriot League pre-reads. Despite being D1, some of the schools seem to be doing pre-reads later than many NESCACs. However, I am wondering if this is because my daughter is lower on their priority list of recruits? It is just tricky trying to schedule official visits when she is holding out on 1-2 schools.
@wisteria100 that makes a lot of sense. The coaches don’t want to say anything negative to the kids they’d like to see on their team and they want to leave the door open, but admissions has to want them. It probably helps if the student brings other things to campus as well, that they serve a second purpose on campus. And I’m sure it helps to have strong grades at that point if a student is just getting “soft” support.