<p>I am looking at a few different schools for bowling. I have applied to and been accepted to Tulane University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The bowling coach at Tulane responds to my emails in a timely manner and I have been speaking with her since October. </p>
<p>I realized UAB had a bowling team only at the beginning of January so I am late on trying to be recruited for their team but I thought they would consider me anyway. I emailed the coach 3 weeks ago. No response.. I called her number listed on the UAB athletics website.. no response.. Yes, it is the weekend. So hopefully tomorrow or the next day I will get a call back.</p>
<p>Has anyone else had issues trying to contact coaches? I realize they are busy but 3 weeks is plenty time to send a quick email. :\
I just don't want to miss out on an opportunity. UAB is very affordable for me and I would absolutely love to be recruited for their bowling team.</p>
<p>There’s all kinds of reasons why you might not have heard back even if it seems to you your stats are where they should be. Sadly the coach might not be interested and no, they won’t necessarily take the time to write back. You won’t be able to tell this from prior team stats or by who’s leaving, because you don’t know who else they might already be talking to. From my son’s own experience we eventually did hear from some of these silent coaches or got information from other sources</p>
<ul>
<li>at least one coach pretty much had his pick of the litter already,</li>
<li>one found my son athletically worthy but said his SATs had to come up,</li>
<li>one was just really laid back about recruiting (but we persisted with a call and my son got an OV)</li>
<li>one coach, very sadly, turned out to have passed away. Would have known that had I read the web site a little more throughly. Also, the school is taking a hiatus from swimming due to funding issues</li>
<li>per an unofficial visit we had with a coach who gave a lot of good advice, some coaches are great coaches but just really bad at recruiting</li>
</ul>
<p>You can pretty much throw your expectations about common courtesy and replying to emails out the window. We did get a reasonable number of these even where the interest was only lukewarm (as a potential walk-on).</p>
<p>My advice would be give it a couple days (as if you had left the message on Monday and not on the weekend), then in a second voice mail try to compact your high interest level, your stats, and your haste given you are already in serious talks with Team X into a punchy message. You might want to write it out before you call. But if you don’t get a reply to a second call, I’d either move on or follow up with a letter. Sending an overnight letter got good attention in 2 cases for us.</p>
<p>Like you mentioned, she may have already decided on a roster for next year, which I understand because I am very late on the whole recruiting process. However, I still think UAB would be affordable without a scholarship. So even if she cannot offer me a scholarship, hopefully I can at least contact her about being a potential walk-on. My academics are pretty decent and usually coaches like when their athletes have high academic stats (shows good work ethic and focus). I sent a video with one of my emails to give her a look at my bowling. </p>
<p>It would greatly disappoint me if she decided to ignore my emails simply because she wasn’t interested… I am very excited about this school. In fact, it is only one of about 3 that I am considering. Tulane is looking very unlikely because of cost and the other school I am looking into is my 3rd choice.</p>
<p>And I know that I should have been more proactive in my own recruitment but I did not even know they had a team until a few weeks ago… I wish I would have known sooner. I guess I will just do the best I can from this point on.</p>
<p>As far as I know, by reading articles on the athletics website, there is one NLI there right now for this season and I am not sure if any were signed in the early signing period in November.</p>
<p>I will wait a couple of days to see if she listens to my voicemail and hopefully calls back. If no response, I will try a letter.</p>
<p>My dad thinks I should give up on this school… It’s sad, really. I don’t want to give up but honestly… 3 weeks and no response? I’m not sure what to do. This school is such a good opportunity and seems very affordable. <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>Don’t give up until the door is actually shut. You don’t know why she has not gotten back to you. Be persistent, try calling again and keep it up until you can speak directly and explain your situation. Until you hear a direct no, there is no reason to give up if this is what you really want.</p>
<p>We found that in the recruiting process, you are sometimes lucky if you get 1 response out of 5 email contacts. You have to be your own advocate. My son often e-mailed coaches once a week and called the ones he was really interested in once a day until he got them. It sometimes helped to email them to tell them when he would be calling. He also called athletic offices to see if could give him the coach schedules. He was very proactive and persistent. Many of these coaches are not in the office all of the time and work reduced hours on short budgets. If this is a school that you are truly interested in, you might consider planning a visit and trying to touch base with the coach then. Do you have any kind of a resume, a recruiting website, or any video? These are all great tools to use in getting coach attention. I don’t know anything about recruiting for Bowling, but it is not at all unusual to never hear back from some coaches. If you are really interested, it is up to you to bump up your efforts. Don’t wait for her to call back!</p>
<p>This is off topic (kinda). So if you want to go to a certain school for a sport but your current ACT is below what they allow, what should you do. I’m a junior and already behind on contacting college coaches of schools I’d like to play at. However I scored pretty poorly on my last ACT. </p>
<p>So my question is, should I start talking to coaches and sending in resumes and hope that I’m not rejected immediately because of my ACT or wait until I get the improved score on the ACT I take in Feb to start contacting these coaches?</p>
<p>bowler - I agree with momof2010 you don’t want to give up until they tell you they are not interested. We had many schools that we thought were ideal not get back to us. I’d suggest doing something like takeitallin’s son AND continue to pursue as many other schools that interest your son as possible. Recruited = passion + skill + exposure + persistence + luck. Good luck.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your responses… Trust me, I didn’t want to give up. I received great news today! The coach emailed me back. She was not allowed to contact me… It was dead period. I knew that they had those but I didn’t know when they were. Is it different for each sport and each coach? Because I talked to another coach last week. I feel bad now for sending her so many emails but now she knows that I am very interested. It all worked out in the end. </p>
<p>Again, thanks for your responses. I guess I was overreacting!</p>
<p>Sometimes its horrible to wait it out- I tried to contact many bowling coaches, they have not replied- but I am still working on it
BTW- do you know if they determine average on sport shot or on house shot? I figured sport shot but I wanted to check ;)</p>