<p><a href="http://blog.berecruited.com/early-signing-period">http://blog.berecruited.com/early-signing-period</a></p>
<p>For fall sports, excluding football, soccer, and men's water polo, athletes can sign an "early" NLI for a week, November 12 – 19, 2014, and then the next chance is February 4, 2015.</p>
<p>DI and DII only of course.</p>
<p>That isn’t really correct. For some sports (most) the early signing is Nov 12-19, but regular signing is then in April, so if you don’t sign in Nov, you wait until April. For some sports-- football, field hockey, track and field, soccer, men’s water polo-- the signing begins on Feb 4 this year. There is also a dead period around early signing when coaches can’t have contact with players in those sports.</p>
<p>Isn’t hockey winter not fall? I didn’t look for the NCAA link, to see which sports qualify for this would be good.</p>
<p>Early signing isn’t for fall sports, it’s for all sports except those specifically listed (football, soccer, track and field, etc) Hockey players can sign early, but not field hockey. All the rest can sign in the early signing period if they want to and are ready, even if they haven’t been officially admitted. If they do not sign during that week, they have to wait until April 15th or so, when the regular signing period reopens.</p>
<p>I asked my daughter’s coach what the benefit of early signing was, and really it is just to get it over with! My life was a lot better once she signed. </p>
<p>She signed in Nov., but decided to have her ‘signing ceremony’ at school in the spring with the majority of the athletes. Her school let anyone who was going to play in college join the ceremony and pretend to sign an NLI, even kids who weren’t allowed to sign one - D3 schools, one heading to Navy, male rowers (non NCAA), some community college baseball players. It was just a fun day. In all, four women rowers signed and had their ceremony in the fall, and 23 were in the signing ceremony in April, although only a few were actually signing that day. We didn’t have any star football players so they didn’t do a separate February signing ceremony.</p>
<p>So sign early in Nov., or wait until April for the majority of sports. For the 5-6 sports that have the Feb. signing, there are special rules if the athlete is also playing another sport like field hockey and lacrosse, a common pairing, so check those rules.</p>
<p>This year, for the first time in recent history, field hockey can sign in the November signing period. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nationalletter.org”>http://www.nationalletter.org</a></p>