The kid is a pretty good athlete for school/intramural, truly enjoys the sport, and has the potential to get better (kid’s sport is a lot more popular in the US).
Kid is the youngest in current varsity team and will probably make varsity in boarding school, but is nowhere near state level championship, for example. As parents, we are not trying to make the kid into an athlete. The kid just happens to love the sport and is pretty good at it and so maybe it can function as a differentiating factor.
At what level does contacting the coach help as opposed to just sounding like hot air?
In your case, it’s reasonable to contact the coach simply to learn more about the program. It sounds like it could play an important part in the decision-making
given how key it is to your kid.
It’s possible that your kid could be a recruit (although not all schools do that) in which case your contact will be especially helpful. And it’s also possible that the interest you show will help regardless of whether he’s a recruit or not.
I am sure you can frame the conversation as interest from your side while setting it up to go further if that makes sense. You can ask the coach if they recruit impact players, what constitutes an impact player, and if your kid isn’t one, what the prospects of playing are.
Assuming it’s a team sport: You/your kid could watch recent games by the schools of interest and see if the kid would be an impact player. You can find videos on the school websites, on Hudl, or on the various livestream platforms used by schools. Best yet, send a highlights video to the coaches. They know best what positions they need to fill, and if your kid is a strong candidate they’ll tell you. Good luck!
That is a great question. I think @gardenstategal had a perfect response for your description. For others looking to be “recruited” elite club teams typically are a higher level than school varsity. So if you have a great basketball player, the club level trumps the school team and would have evidence of state and national rankings to share with coaches. Individual events (swimmers, runners) have easy to understand rankings to share with coaches. I know my response doesn’t answer your question, but for others taking a look at this thread.
So basically, it doesn’t hurt to reach out. My DS did and it was just nice to have someone at the school at least interested and encouraging through the process.
Agree with the above. It NEVER hurts to make contact. Some coaches are actively recruiting. Some are not. But sometimes all it takes is a coach telling admissions your kid would play. That might be the tip in your kids favor. I’m not sure anyone really knows how much this matters.
We thought my son was on the list for two coaches at his school but over the summer the basketball coach came to his summer games and said something like “oh I’m so glad he got in he’s going to be a big varsity player for me. He wasn’t on my list.” Paraphrasing! Anyway, not what we thought was going on. So you really just never know.
Not knowing the sport you’re in makes it harder to give advice.
Agree with the above. It never hurts to contact the coach, and regardless of the level at which your child ends up playing, you can ask questions about things like how much the school recruits for top level players in the sport (as opposed to developing players though 3rds/JV/varsity), preseason training, etc. If the sport is important — which it sounds like it is — it’s nice to meet the coach and see what he/she’s like. Keep in mind, though, that coaches (like all BS faculty) generally wear a lot of hats and may or may not respond or respond quickly. They are busy teaching, coaching, supervising dorms, working in admissions, dean’s office and with other responsibilities. When DS was applying he had coaches respond immediately and come watch him play and others who didn’t respond to emails but then showed up at the admissions office when he visited. Don’t be disheartened!
If your kiddo is already playing on a Varsity team while only in 8th grade, or if your kiddo is going to repeat or transfer, I would contact the coaches. This was very helpful for us in applying at the time because a couple of schools were in a state with a “transfer rule”.
Kiddo also studied rosters for the target schools and made an Excel spread sheet to determine potential spots opening up on the teams due to graduation, and where there were perceived vulnerabilities as well as needs. This does not always work (eg PG’s). Kiddo sent highlight videos for the sports, as well as links to sports websites tracking scores/highlights/stats.
As noted above, coaches at BS’s wear many hats and are very busy. Also, some coaches at some schools are not full-time faculty - so keep trying!
Mom in the trenches of applications here (so no verified, past successful experience to share, but): DD reached out to some coaches and began conversations. They all wanted video. We don’t have it, and sport season was ending so it was difficult to get anything. Husband went to the last game and tried to get something on his phone but it was ridiculously bad. Useless. We started to feel like it felt weird to reach out and then say “we don’t have any video.” DD would NOT be an impact athlete in her sport, but we still thought: oh maybe it would be nice for the coach to be excited about her arrival since she is a solid player. Anyway, we kind of let the whole thing go and just kept it as an important EC on app. (This thread is making me wonder if that was a mistake. We might reconsider reaching out to remaining schools with a “Hi I just submitted my application and I’m just excited about your team, etc etc…”)
Thanks for all the responses. Like Calliemom, we dont have any videos either. The kid is good and has potential but not Hall of Fame great so it never really occurred to us non-athletic parents to highlight it :). Sports is really just not that huge here and there aren’t really league wide or rankings at mid/highschool level.
I think at this point we will mention it in the application and keep it as a very important EC.