NESCAC Athletic Recruiting

Athletic Recruits
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@Leaduse, the process is fairly fluid - especially at this point in time. So I would continue to cast a wide net at the same time that you continue to engage in communications with the coach. You do hear of Ivy or D1 athletes getting late into the game and the coach rejiggering his or her priorities. Continuing to communicate with other coaches protects against such a situation, but in addition, minds can change. You may find a school you like even more, so keep the net wide.

Certainly, if you are the no. 1 recruit, the coach is going to do whatever he or she can to get you admitted. That could mean using a slot. It could also be that using a slot is not necessary. So being a top recruit is quite helpful in terms of the odds of admission.

Whether it impacts a positive pre-read from admissions is different. Probably not. The point of pre-reads is to help coaches narrow their pool of recruits. The analogy for the pre-read is the traffic light (red light is a no go, yellow is a maybe and green is a go). Because many more athletes are given pre-reads than end up applying with coach support, it is likely that the coach doesn’t designate any given pre-read student as a “top recruit.”

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The consensus here is likely more right than not. But you can’t really make blanket statements about any of this. Yes, an AO will do the preread. But the coach may know with near certainty what the answer will be. Or not. Depends on what the academic package looks like, how the school handles pre reads, and what the priority of that particular sport is at that school.

My son was at an Ivy, so similar to the NESCAC that AO’s have final say, and prereads matter. He was told spring semester of his junior year that as long as he didn’t majorly screw up the preread was a formality. In fact they did his later in July, because he wasn’t on the list of guys the coach was worried about. He could tell that barring some major change my son was a green light recruit.

Because of that, the coach offered a spot and my son committed in March. I guess maybe we were naive but I don’t think so. I think unless my son seriously let his academics slide or got arrested the coach was correct telling him that he could comfortably offer him a slot that early.

That is not universal though. But that’s my point. I don’t think there is anything wrong with asking the coach where you stand, especially if it is at a school you are ready to commit to if the conversation turns into an offer.

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All this talk of questions to ask has me wondering, do parents do any of the talking? Has anyone gone through this process with an a pretty introverted athlete?

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Most/many kids are awkward and uncomfortable at first. But by the end of junior year they are much more comfortable! I expect coaches are used to this.

I’m sure there is more than one way to do it, but I only got involved when there was an offer, or close to an offer and the coach wanted me at a meeting (in person, and zoom).

Coaches are in the business of attracting athletes they want, so if ypur athlete is in that pool, they will feel the love – they will feel sought after and valued. So it’s easier to talk under those circumstances. (That’s why it is super important to understand if there’s an offer or not. “We think you are a great player, and we would love to have you play here” is not an offer, eg, but it sure sounds great doesn’t it?!)

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I did help my kids craft emails, but generally they were the ones doing the writing/texting/talking. The student is the one that has to build a relationship with the coach, so both can decide if there’s a good fit.

Like Cinnamon1212, H or I did get involved at the end when offers were on the table and we wanted to be sure that everyone was on the same page.

If the student will be applying for financial aid, this is also when a parent could/should get involved.

On one visit with D19, we met the coach, introduced ourselves, and I quickly excused myself, as typical. This was the only coach who said ‘sit down mom, this is important stuff and I want you to hear it’. So of course I stayed, but was cognizant of letting my D do most of the talking.

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@TonyGrace - Our daughter is an introvert and reaching out to coaches via email was not hard for her to do. We coached her a bit before calls and visits, but we never met a coach. She is confident about her ability and had the stats (which wasn’t easy due to Covid) to back up her athletic talent.

It is so much about coach and team fit and I know I would have dominated the meetings (as I am not an introvert and can’t keep my mouth shut!). She is at an Ivy and when she showed up to unofficial meet and greets (no officials due to Covid) she heard from a couple of the coaches that they appreciated her coming on her own, so they could get to know her.

We were not requesting financial aid, so that may differ with contact. Also imagine it differs by sport too. We were never were asked to join a call when it got down to the final few and still haven’t met her coach (she is a freshman).

I think it is important for your child to take the lead and they can always ask the coach if they would like the parent present for meetings.

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You have no idea :rofl: but I get what you are saying. The maturing is coming in slowly and we are not quite at that point yet so we will get there.

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@TonyGrace,
There is no one right way to get through the recruiting process. Different kids, different schools, different coaches all speak to differing approaches. I do think it is valuable for a parent to participate in at least one meeting/call with the coach giving the offer. With us, it was organic. For example, at one OV, I was told by the AC that it was fine that I was dropping the kid off, but that the coach was going to want me there for the meeting. In another instance, I met the coach during an unofficial visit but not during the OV.

When I have heard coaches complain about parents, it involved parent who took over the meeting, bragging to the coach about how good their kid was. You want to take the back seat during the meeting. But, I can almost guarantee (because it happened at every official and unofficial coach meeting we ever had) that at some point the coach will turn to the parent and ask “do you have any questions.”

Take this as an opportunity to ask all of those difficult questions that your kid is afraid of asking and all of those questions that are raised here on this forum. The coach is the guy who knows. The rest of us are giving you advice based on our experience - which most likely is not at that school or with that coach.

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FWIW, this is what I did. It seemed to work well.

I helped S craft his resume, initial introduction email, and update emails that got blanketed to coaches (by blanketed, in reality I think there were about 15 or so coaches he was reaching out to and keeping in the loop about his athletic progress). I also did look over other emails he sent, and gave him input on communication he was having.

He took phone calls on his own, I never got involved in that. I also didn’t see most of the texting back and forth with coaches, on a few occasions he asked me to review his response before he sent it. I did have a few coaches that asked my son to have me call them separately, so I did that and had a couple conversations with them. That didn’t happen until the coaches were pretty far along with him and had either made an offer or were about to make one.

Recruiting rules were a bit different, and he did unofficials at Ivy/NESCAC schools that we lined up the summer after his sophomore year. I went along. I think the coaches all were fine with and even appreciated me being there. They asked me a few things, and asked if I had questions. But they were clearly interested in talking to my son, not to me. And I tried to follow the rule of “only speak when spoken to”, which is tough. But he did 90% of the talking for us, mostly I just listened and nodded, unless the coach directly asked me a question.

I do think with Ivies and D3’s at some point the coaches are going to want to talk to a parent to confirm that we are onboard with the no scholarship situation. 2 of the 3 coaches that wanted to talk to me were Ivies, and I think they wanted to know 3 things. 1 - am I ok with no athletic scholarship. If not, then they don’t want to waste their time with us. 2 - Am I going to be supportive of him competing at a high athletic level at a high academic school. It’s not easy, and I think the kids without supportive parents are going to be a lot more likely to either transfer or quit the team after the coach has wasted a precious slot on them. 3 - Am I going to be a PITA or am I going to know my place and let the coach do his job without me trying to get involved. We all know parents who are incapable of staying out of playing and coaching decisions. The first question gets asked outright, the second 2 get asked indirectly.

Your kid will be awful at communicating with the first couple of coaches she talks to. They almost all are. But they get it figured out pretty quickly. Also the college coaches realize that these kids usually communicate on Snapchat, not in real conversations using complete sentences with adults. Most college coaches I know could carry on an animated conversation with a fence post. They are experts at easing kids into talking. My son pretty quickly went from looking like he was going to throw up when a coach called him to glancing at his phone, telling me the name of a D1 coach he idolizes that was calling him, then saying hello and wandering off to a quiet place to talk. Honestly that was a huge perk of the recruiting process. His confidence dealing with authority figures increased tremendously. A skill that will serve them well down the road in job interviews and job situations. He wasn’t afraid to talk to people anymore.

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I should have added that if you are participating in a meeting, have a couple of questions ready (same advice to give your kiddo). S usually had a couple set things he wanted to ask, and a couple of things he wanted to know about, but wanted me to ask. He also wanted nothing to do with the money conversation. Which is fair. No 17 year old is going to be able to make the call of what he/she can afford. That is a mom/dad question, and most coaches realize that. Just because Junior says dad is ok being full pay at an Ivy doesn’t mean dad is ok being full pay.

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Great question. My D22 is VERY quiet. At some point in the process, we parents were invited to Zoom calls with the coaches. But I do wish I had been able to be in some of the conversations because my daughter did not ask specific enough questions, nor did she answer the dreaded “where else are you looking?” question in the most savvy way. I felt that some of the coaches were a little disingenuous with her. She definitely had some big let downs, but as everyone has advised, she had several schools on her list and ended up with a good match.

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They all say some dumb things. If they are willing to role play with you (mine wasn’t) that’s good. At a minimum they should have some questions in mind. Some they will need to ask, some will be covered. You never know what the coaches will say. We did go over some bullet points of information he needed, and things he should say to bolster his standing. One thing he did care about and always asked about was whether he could stay local to the college and train over the summer. Both because he wanted to know, but also he wanted them to know that he planned on being a 12 month a year athlete for them, not just an in season athlete. I do think at a few programs that did increase his stock a bit. At the others, it was probably just expected.

When the Columbia coach asked my son if he could see himself in NYC, my son said “I don’t know, I’ll have to think about that.” Not the most savvy answer he could have given, although I guess the coach probably figured that this kid will be brutally honest during the recruiting process. They didn’t drop him, and eventually even wanted to fly out to us to give him an in person offer. They know they are dealing with scared kids, and are used to trying to read between the lines. Plus they know that when they call again in a month that the kid will probably be a lot more polished, because they have done this several times already and it isn’t as intimidating. That wasn’t the first call my son took, it was the third or fourth but I think it was still on the “opening day” that coaches were allowed to call.

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It is hard for regular 17/18 old kids to understand and properly handle the complex recruiting process.

I had to translate the cryptic “adult” language from coaches to my son and remind him when to wait and when to follow up. After his OV to one of the NESCAC school (he drove here by himself), I sent a thank you note to the coach but the coach responded to me saying he thought my son was no longer interested in the program because he did not stay for the “optional” Q&A with the coach. We met the coach on an earlier trip so my son thought all his questions were answered and wanted to drive home before dark. Not knowing the “optional” Q&A is basically 1:1 with the coach to ask your commitment.

Luckily after explaining the situation and another phone call with the coach, we got things back on track and he is admitted with ED1. Could have been a disaster if I did not fire off the thank you email.

Colleges should not make the recruiting process this hard for the kids.

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I do think that recruiting is a challenge, particularly for some kids. But it is a parent-guided introduction to job search skills, so it can be a great training grounds. Here was my effort at role play. I am sure that others will be more successful.

Me playing the coach: “So, tell me something about yourself.”

Kid playing kid: “The coach is NOT going to ask that question.”

I had to smile (perhaps smugly) at the first question posed by the coach in the actual meeting.

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I so wish that at 50 I had the wisdom and life knowledge that a 17 year old thinks they have.

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Sounds like you did a lot of things well, thank you for that write-up. Was there a particular guide or ‘playbook’ that helped you with that process? (e.g., selecting target schools, timing of unofficial visits, etc.) I have a sophomore and would like to make sure we’re aware of what can/should be done and when.

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Not really, just a lot of looking around on here to find out what people have done. I asked a lot of questions too. Seriously a lot of questions!

Some stuff is sport specific, although a lot of it applies across-the-board. The contact and visit rules were slightly different when my son went through. We did unofficial visits between sophomore and junior year but I don’t think that is allowed anymore. But we also couldn’t do official visits or have Coach contact until later than you can now.

I’m not sure what sport you are in, but one thing I would do is try to get an honest assessment of where your kid fits in. That could be easier said than done. It’s really hard as a parent to see where that is, too. Usually parents overestimate, I underestimated. But there’s so much emotional investment it’s hard to be completely objective.

In our case, my son was fortunate that his high school coach head coach was a fairly high level college coach for several years before he switched high school. Also his club coaches were active college coaches. So he had a few people with a lot of experience seeing where different levels of talent go giving him advice on where they thought he would fit into the big picture. If I had listened to them we probably could’ve skipped a couple things we did early, but like I said I underestimated. I was looking at what he had accomplished, but they saw how hard he worked in the room and how quickly he was improving every day compared to the competition. So they looked a couple years into the future and had an eerily accurate view of how his junior high school year was going to go, which is when he was really being noticed.

Once you get some general idea of level, it’s a matter of getting on the radar of the right people. He had a pretty targeted search, because he wanted high academics and high level wrestling, and that’s a pretty tiny universe of schools. He ended up targeting 15-20.

Once he had that, he sent an introduction email to coaches, with an athletic rĂ©sumĂ© and some film attached. Actually it was a link to a private YouTube channel. Different sports have different requirements for video, that’s something you need to look into specifically. If you can’t find the answer, just ask. You will get a couple responses pretty quickly I am guessing.

We did not do this, but you should Cc a couple assistant coaches too. You never know who is actually in charge of recruiting your area or position and an email to the head coach only may fall through the cracks.

There’s more info out there, there was a pretty good thread pinned to the top where several of us put advice to some common questions. I would definitely read through that. I also searched for mention of my sport going back several years, and read just about every thread in this group going back a couple years.

That’s probably enough to get you started at this point. Like I said, ask questions! I do not think my son would’ve ended up where he did without the help I got on the board. Good luck.

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I always recommend the Athletic Scholarship Playbook, which sets out the process clearly, and is applicable even if you are going d3.

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Here’s another question. How does legacy play into all this? At what point do you bring that up, if at all?

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For recruits? I doubt the coach cares at all about legacy, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to mention. It’s unlikely that would tip the scale on who he/she supports in the admissions process. The legacy hook would still be on the application when submitted so the AO will see it.

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