<p>Regarding the recruitment process, I've corresponded with an assistant coach, but never with the head coach. Does anyone know if that is normal? Should I make an effort to include the head coach in my correspondence as well?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any responses!</p>
<p>It’s a good idea to always include the head coach and all asst. coaches in any correspondence. Many head coaches will designate an asst. coach as the recruiting coach. In that case you can respond to the asst. but still copy the head coach each time.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the sport. In track and field the rosters are large and it’s not unusual to communicate almost exclusively with your event coach during the recruiting process.</p>
<p>I was told by others (but am not 100% sure myself) that whomever responds to you is your contact and that’s who you should correspond with going forward without copying the head coach in each time unless the assistant copies them in originally. We have been following that protocol so if that’s not the case, would appreciate advice from those who know for sure. Ours is a sport with a head coach and typically two assistants.</p>
<p>My feeling with football is that you should communicate with whoever is communicating with you, which will be the area recruiter and/or position coach. I think it might aggravate those coaches if you go “over their head” by copyong the head coach, as well as annoy the head coach who has delegated these responsibilities out for a reason.</p>
<p>Definately agree with bonard. Having just finished “recruiting” my son for football, I’ve learned that every school (at least for D3/NESCAC) has there own twist on the process…different timelines, different ways of communicating etc. It’s never wrong to just come out and ask who your child should be reaching out to. Alot of schools do assign a recruiting coach by region…and at a couple of schools son was speaking to, the head coach did all the talking…My advice is to make sure that the head coach at least knows your kid’s name. In our experience, 2 of son’s recruiting coaches (who he’d been in close contact with for 4+ months) moved on to other schools pretty late in the process. Fortunately the head coaches at both schools picked up communication soon after so we knew that he was still on their radar.</p>
<p>My son just finished recruiting for D1/2/3 soccer and ended up at a D2 school. His sport typically has a head coach and 1 or 2 asst. coaches. It varied by school as to who did the recruiting but he usually copied all. It really paid off when coaches did leave programs.</p>
<p>While we sent all initial e-mails to both the head coach as well as the event coach for track & field for my S, responses and phone calls only came back from assistants and/or a recruiting coach. We only had dialogue with the head coach during the official visit.</p>