<p>My son is getting phone calls from coaches finally after all hard works.</p>
<p>So question is : Does he need to commit the coach before 4/01? He is applying RD. We feel financial aid package should be part of equation to decide which school to go next year. </p>
<p>If my son is holding the decision until 4/1, Does that mean all slots could have been taken and no more walk on the team any more for D3 if we wait that long?</p>
<p>With my son’s D3 school, the coach asked him to commit in exchange for his support. This is an EA school and he applied EA per coaches request (we would have anyway). Don’t know if coach would have supported him if we did not commit. Didn’t want to find out. (Un)fortunately, FA won’t be a big issue. Ours is a small sport though. Don’t know how it would be in a bigger sport like soccer with many more members on the team, but suspect the coach won’t be quite as enthusiastic with support if there’s a reasonable chance that your son may go elsewhere.</p>
<p>If all he’s looking for is to be possibly be on the team, and not for admissions support, then he could probably just explain the situation and ask the coach if there would be room on the team for him if he ends up attending that school.</p>
<p>You can ask the coach if they can take your financial aid forms for an early read by FA, to give an indication of what his aid will be. Many college have preliminary financial aid profiles for the parents of athletes to fill out, so parents have some assurance the money will come.</p>
<p>Congrats to your son!</p>
<p>Unless the school is cheating, the only thing of value that a coach has to offer is support in the admissions process. If you don’t need that support, there is at best only a marginal advantage to “committing” to him (I put the term in quotes because in RD, even if you commit, at D3 schools you have only a moral obligation to honor the commitment).</p>
<p>If your son does not commit, and just shows up on the first day of practice, a coach would have to be a fool not to give him a roster spot if he is better than the other players on the field. I suspect that the worst that could happen is that the coach would be predisposed to favor those whom he actually recruited. But superior performance would generally outweigh predisposition.</p>
<p>That being said, the safest thing to do is to broach the issue with the relevant coaches directly and explicitly. You may not get a completely straight answer, but it will at least give you something concreteto go on.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that my son is a senior and not seeking tip from coaches for admission.</p>
<p>My son figured out last night that return of investment was not so great for his sport. He calculated we spent about 50K that includes club fees, uniform, cloth, shoes, skill tutoring, tournaments, camps, showcase and oversea camp. He decided that he WOULD NOT have his ow kid because it is too expense to maintain. We locate at north Texas. Soccer here is extreme competitive. I thought soccer just need cleat and ball compare football or baseball. So I am pretty wrong. </p>
<p>Anyway we will make decision once we receive FA or scholarship package from each school. If there is no spot for him that is a risk we have to take if he got admitted. At the mean time he keeps talking to coaches and let them know we are not commit any school yet. Any comment? or someone has same case?</p>
<p>PS. He does not include music expenditures as part of having kid formula.</p>
<p>Thats a pretty rash and naive reaction to decide not to have a kid because of…soccer? what if the kid isn’t interested in playing sports? or what if he is? Shouldn’t you want to support your kid if you know that the experience you had was great? This I do not get</p>
<p>Well, obviously, a 17/18 year old isn’t truly making that decision. I think that was a tongue-in-cheek comment.</p>
<p>D2 is a recruited soccer player at a D1 school. She has a full COA scholarship due to athletic and academic $$$. It can work. She had a great freshman season this year but will probably not return next year. Make sure the “fit” is right!!! For her the culture of the team was wrong…but you don’t know that until you are there!</p>
<p>NorthMinnesota</p>
<p>How do you define the “fit” and “culture of team” if you could? Thanks</p>
<p>So far my son got some phone calls from coaches. Some continuously have contacted him and some just disappear from the earth. Is is normal? Or because coach has someone committed and fill the slot already.</p>
<p>I think fit and culture are difficult to assess accurately. Things that may affect “fit”: team academic priorities (or lack of), degree of partying in season, team pressure to conform to who you could socialize with, campus acceptance of athletes, sexual orientation, upperclass players brought in by former coach being replaced by newly recruited players by new coach, etc.</p>
<p>The reason I am asking this question was that playing soccer could be an important factory beside academic. He shouldn’t want to be the position of quit playing soccer after entering school. </p>
<p>If talking about team academic priorities, I thought top selected LAC D3 teams should have better environment since there is no sport scholarship. Maybe I am wrong too.</p>