We are entering this phase of the process. S was pretty nervous about it, but seems to be handling it fine. After the first couple I think he pretty much knows how the conversations will go. He has fielded several over the last week.
My issue is I’m still pretty nervous, and it is because he is handling this part pretty much on his own. As much as I want to, I haven’t listened in on any of them because I was afraid that would make him nervous. He’s a pretty popular and personable kid, but I don’t think his strengths lend well to a phone call. He’s a lot more reserved on the phone than in person, he doesn’t interview particularly well, and he’s pretty humble. For better or worse, I think he’s also pretty honest on the calls. I know one coach asked son if he could see himself living where the school is located for four years. Son gave a very honest reply, which is I’m not sure I’ll have to think about it. Hopefully the coach appreciated the honesty, although I don’t know that one hundred percent honesty was the smartest choice there.
I think the calls are going okay, one coach sent him an email after the call saying he thought that they were a good fit with each other. So I’m probably nervous over nothing. Any of you that have been through this have any advice on me keeping my sanity for this part?
I will take a stab here. Your sanity certainly will return when your son receives his acceptance letters. Hopefully, he will apply ED and things will calm down in December, fingers crossed.
Regarding your son’s approach to the calls, he needs guidance from you. You need to tell him that he cannot make a decision unless he knows the full landscape. He should be enthusiastic about all colleges and coach calls until he is ready to make a decision. Once he has made his decision, he can politely deflect and tell the college coach calling his plans. Choices are a good thing – and by taking this route he is unnecessarily limiting his choices.
This is like interviewing for a job. You need a job, and you need a salary. You wouldn’t tell a potential employer in an interview that you really don’t envision yourself working at that place of employment. You are encouraging and enthusiastic until you get offers, you then choose. Similarly, you wouldn’t tell an admissions counselor in an admissions interview that you can’t see yourself at the school. If you do, it is a pretty easy decision for the adcom.
It IS hard. I compare the process to having multiple dance partners!
My main regret looking back on my son’s experience was that I wish he hadn’t applied to so many schools (11). It was SO difficult to juggle that many coaches! I think I would have limited it to five or six if we had it to do over again.
Good luck! Everything will work out in the long run.
Thanks. I used a different anology but pretty much told him the same thing. I think we probably need to talk about it again though.
He is just a junior, so lots of stressful days left. That particular coach talked to him about coming to check out the campus and see what it is really like, so I don’t think he completely torpedoed his chances there, although I’m sure he didn’t help then either. I think since he is a junior, the coaches probably do expect everything to be a little bit more preliminary. Neither one of them really knows enough yet to know if they want to spend the next four years together. S does need to do a better job of making every coach feel like he is one on S’s favorites though.
I think the coaches are pretty accustomed to these kids not being great on the phone. After all, this is the texting generation. Your S probably comes off better than you think. That being said, a practice interview would be a good way to coach him on what and how to say things. Also, we are one year ahead of you, but I try to let my S handle everything himself to a point before I get involved. I think coaches admire the kids who handle it themselves vs. those whose parents are too much in the mix.
I’ve tried to keep myself invisible as far as the coaches are concerned. I’ve been pretty involved, but they only talk to him and even though I help him write emails nothing ever comes from me. I’m basically his research assistant / secretary.
The big difference with these calls is that he is used to bouncing stuff off of me before he replies to an email or text. Obviously that doesn’t work with a phone call.
Outside of the recruiting process, there are days when he seems totally helpless and incapable of doing anything without assistance. I feel like he asks my opinion on things he should be able to figure out on his own. On the other hand, he has left on several 1 - 3 week trips for camps and competitions, and pretty much only replied to me with one word texts the whole time he was gone… He found a part-time job completely on his own, and they must like him because they keep trying to give him too many hours. So I know he is capable of doing things on his own.
I probably just described the typical sixteen-year-old. His older brother was much more independent and self-reliant, which is probably what makes me a bit nervous about this one handling such an important task without assistance.
I will go out on a limb and suggest that your boy will be pretty darn mature after he gets through this recruiting thing. Trust me, I knew a few seemingly dependent and disorganized recruits.
Parents are a big part of the process, and I commend you for the way that you are supporting your S. My only suggestion is that you accompany him on meetings with the coach (as opposed to phone calls). We had several coaches say that they wanted to talk to the parents. They said they wanted to see what the family was like, but probably the real reason was to assess interest level. I am sure many coaches have spoken to recruits dying to commit to a school only to be told later by a parent that matriculation wasn’t feasible. I think the coaches get a better sense from the parents.
He did a few unofficial visits that we put together this summer, and I did accompany him to those. He has another coming up in a few weeks that a college is organizing, and the coach told son that I was invited as well. I try to keep fairly quiet during those meetings and it is REALLY HARD! Sometimes as an adult you can sense what information they are trying to get to, and S didn’t always get it.
For example, the coaches all were trying to tease out whether he could handle the increase in intensity of the college practices. They didn’t just ask outright, because everyone will automatically say yes. His training regimen is unusual even for a highly recruited high school kid and he has a couple of specific examples that show how it won’t really be much of a transition for him, and the coaches were pretty impressed when he told them about his training. But a couple times I had to prompt him to tell them.
That’s kind of a specific example, but there were others that were similar. He just doesn’t sell himself very well. He is getting better at it though.
I have seen him mature and get more confident this week already. He doesn’t have that panicked look in his eyes when he gets an out of area code call on his phone that he had last week! He got one late last night, and after he answered he just mouthed to me which coach it was and went into his room and closed the door.
Just agreeing on how much a teenaged boy matures through this process. I really enjoyed watching my kid grow by leaps and bounds from his first informational meeting with a coach (bit of a mess) to the final phone calls he made to other schools to tell them he was going elsewhere. The growing confidence with which they answered those long distance calls (what teenager actually “talks” on the phone anymore), chatting about games, competition, etc., and growing into the role of a college athlete, was fun to see.
My kid takes the phone calls in another room, but usually has the speaker phone on, and I am permitted to eavesdrop from the other room; before the call we would do a role play (“how would you answer this question…?”) and then afterwards we might do a debrief. We’ve also prepped a few answers if my kid gets a question they are not anticipating or they are not sure of an appropriate answer (hmm well let me think about that and get back to you…). My kid also has a list of questions to ask initially, but has since trimmed the list down quite a bit (how to you handle conflicts between practices and matches with classes or labs?). We are looking at D3 schools not in the NESCAC, so YMMV.
I was listening in on a call last night and just hoping that my son’s poor phone conversation skills are somewhat typical of teenage boys and that coaches are used to that.
My most cringe-worthy moment happened when we met with the UT-Austin track coach. I had told S we would need to talk about scholarships at some point. But the FIRST words out of S’s mouth when the meeting started were, “How does the money work?” Ack.
The basic communication skills are just lacking in that generation, and I guess that I am partially to blame. I had S write a few thank you notes to some coaches that went way beyond the call of duty with the help they gave him this summer preparing for Nationals. He didn’t resist, but he had no idea how to write a thank you note unless I walked him through it. I hear him thank people all the time, but he didn’t know how to write a formal note.
We are not D1 but I was met with resistance with writing thank you notes after OV. But I insisted. Although my kids write thank yous to relatives and my friends all the time, writing them to others is not typical. If nothing else they remember your kid.
It’s great when the kids are making the calls, writing the notes, scheduling the visits, handling it all and it provides another showcase for their maturity, ability to adjust to new challenges, etc etc etc. But you do need to reserve a parent role in the whole process where money and commitment start coming up. It might be possible for a 17 year old to winnow things down to a couple final choices, but if you can’t afford either of them it’s not a success. A quarter scholarship on the baseball team is a lot and shows a huge commitment to you, but do you know what 3/4 of out of state tuition is in California? And that assumes you didn’t get railroaded by a high pressure coach forcing a decision too soon or weasel-worded into a vague position where you might not be working with true info. When it gets close to the end make sure you’re there to hear offers, to ask clarifying questions and to make sure nothing is agreed to that can’t be honored.
Agree completely @StPaulDad . I am pretty hands off as far as the day to day with the coaches, but am very involved in the process. S and I talk pretty much every time he gets contacted and go over what was said. I even started a spreadsheet, because I can’t keep track and I don’t think he can either. Both of us have eliminated schools that the other liked after we talked through our reasons why it is a bad fit. (Any public CA school would probably go here unless it came with that elusive full scholarship in an equivalency sport). It’s been a pretty mutual process.
Ultimately he is the one who gets to go, so ultimately he will have to make the decision. But we talk about pros/cons to all of the schools that come up, including the financial portion. I am fortunate that we have a good relationship, and I would be shocked if he committed anything to a coach without running it by me first. His club coach also has extensive college recruiting experience (on both sides of the table) so I don’t think S will want to commit without getting his blessing either.
Overall he’s gotten pretty good at this. I’ve listened in on a couple calls, and other than that time mentioned above which was on one of his first calls I think he is doing a good job. He is getting better at being a bit more enthusiastic and less brutally honest about what doubts may be going on in his head.
That coach he told he didn’t know if he could live where the school is called me. We actually had about a 30 minute conversation about many things, including that and whether the school was a good fit academically/athletically/financially. S has talked to him several times since then. I think S is very high on the coaches list as of right now, which is kind of funny. It isn’t S’s #1 but is decently high on his list too. Just one of the many things, both good and bad, that don’t seem to go the way I expect.
We are in season now, as are the college coaches. So the calls have gotten less frequent. I think that’s good for everyone’s sanity. I expect things to get pretty crazy starting this spring and continuing until he makes a decision. This is fun, but pretty stressful.
You know, some of the coaches aren’t that much older than the recruits, so it wouldn’t surprise me to hear my daughter talking to a coach with very casual language. A few of the coaches also didn’t seem to know that much about the academics of the school either (one was new to the school, others just not as involved in academics). Now that her coach has been at the school a few years, she knows who to direct the questions about academics to, but still doesn’t know the answers about classes, professors, or special programs.
