@cinnamon1212 , you’d think, given the amount of cash we’ve spent with them. But she is more attuned to the D1 process and really doesn’t seem plugged into the D3 world.
So, I have a question for the board: my son just attended a showcase. He emailed a handful of coaches ahead of time and all replied saying they were looking forward to seeing him. Then, he emailed after, thanking them for coming, and asking if they had any feedback for him. The programs we know are interested wrote back with very specific, complimentary feedback. The two athletic reach schools wrote back “We have interest in continuing to see you play, please keep us updated with your tournament schedule.”
It is clear that they are lukewarm at best. My question: have any of you known programs that start off fairly disinterested changing tack and becoming more? Or, write these schools off (in our heads, anyway)?
@OCDaddy, definitely have your D ask the coaches where she is interested straight up where she stands. If she is a top recruit they will say so. If they just say that she is in the “pool”, it is likely while she is still in the mix, there are recruits currently ranked higher than her and they are still seeing how things shake out.
@cinnamon1212, never write a program off, in your own heads or otherwise. Programs change their views of recruits all the time. We had programs come out of the woodwork in October of senior year, with very little in the line of prior communication, asking for an OV. You can’t control a program’s needs, or how good a recruiter any given coach is. All you can do is keep working very hard, and good things will happen.
@OCDaddy, if you are unsure about whether or not your daughter is a recruit, we won’t know more than you. Unsatisfying, I know, but the only folks who would know are the coaches. This will be a tough time for NESCAC LAX, as the season is getting going and coaches may be very busy. But, perhaps there is a school that is not too far away at which you could visit. Schedule a meeting with the coach. You should make sure to attend the meeting with your daughter, as she will almost certainly say that the coach told her that she sucks. Talk to the coach. Ask what the coach is looking for, what the needs are, whether your daughter could fulfill those needs, whether your daughter has the academic chops to get in. I think you will find the meeting informing. If the coach says, “you can try out if you get in,” then I would say she is not a recruit. Otherwise, I would say she is still in the running. Don’t give up – keep pounding the emails.
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IMO the fact that the two reach coaches replied to his email suggest they are probably more than lukewarm. I know these terms are subjective, but so many communications to coaches go answered.
A coach’s recruiting list can be very dynamic…athletes are progressing (or not), academics progressing (or not), possible recruits may or may not hit their testing targets, coach may find out parents are crazy, etc., etc.
When the funnel really starts to narrow in the late summer/fall, if a student athlete turns down an offer, a coach goes to his next person…who may have previously thought the coach was ‘lukewarm’ in terms of interest. And so on…coaches sometimes have to go deep into their lists, even into senior year spring before things become clear.
When D19 was going thru the process, she kept following up with coaches until they told her she is out, or they made her an offer. It took awhile for every coach to sort thru things and their time tables were not in sync, even those from the same conference (i.e., NESCAC). If she were to get an offer, it didn’t necessarily matter that she was the first choice, third, or tenth.
The waiting was hard, but ultimately we told her she could only control what she could control, which I think helped her relax. A little bit.
@gointhruaphase , thanks for your thoughtful comments. I don’t agree that if I don’t know you wouldn’t as you pretty much know what we know. If in fact someone has been through this before they might know whether or not at this point we should be getting definitive feedback from coaches. If where we are is typical then yes, we’re all in the dark together. But I half-expected someone to say ‘if they were interested they’d be calling and texting and saying “she’s on our list”’ which I haven’t yet heard. I was concerned that the train had already left the station.
But your advice strikes me as reasonable and I will attempt to follow it. I’ve been staying invisible and letting her handle all of it for fear of being THAT parent, but perhaps the time is coming for some candid conversation between adults. We just want to avoid wasting everyone’s time, and if she isn’t a viable recruit that’s perfectly cool. Maine is an 10 hour drive and I’d rather not do that more times than is strictly necessary!
@OCDaddy definitely listen to the posters who have already been through the process; however although my son is also just a junior I’ll offer my point of view.
I think it’s early in the process to get a parent involved. When your daughter next sends an email, with, say, her tournament schedule, she can end the email with “Since XYZ school is one of my top choices, I would be interested to know where you are in your recruiting process”. My son used just about those exact words, and every coach answered fairly specifically. (Note, the weaker programs said they were wrapping up the 2020s and were about to start looking at the 2021s).
I think the time for a parent to get involved directly with the coach is around the time a kid thinks they’ve received an offer. Of course I’m coaching from the sidelines – I pushed my son to ask for clarity, on his own he wouldn’t have.
@OCDaddy , recruiting rules for lacrosse changed 2-3 seasons ago, and everyone is still getting used to the new timelines. I’d say for the top programs (Middlebury, Tufts, Amherst, Williams) your daughter is not a recruit. They have top athletes who all have top grades. You can look at their rosters to see where they come from and if they have players from outside the top lacrosse programs (prep schools or club teams). Last year Middlebury had one girl from Colorado and 2 from Ohio; all the rest were from New England/New Jersey. If your daughter’s coaches thought she was right for a top program, they’d be pushing that. As a junior, your daughter would know if they were interested in her. Some of the lower ranked (lax) schools will still be recruiting this summer, but not many
Now if you move on from NESCAC, she’ll get more interest because of her lax skills and her academics. Kenyon, Smith, Centre all were after my daughter. Their lax teams aren’t good and my daughter had no interest in LACs, so it was a double no.
@twoinanddone , telling it like it is! Thanks for your candor. Guess that Williams clinic we’re going to later this month was a poor investment. We’ll make the best of it. Williams Inn isn’t a terrible way to spend a weekend. 
@cinnamon1212 , thanks also for your perspective. We are going to steal that line if it’s okay by you.
None of this is life and death. It’s a dumb game chasing a rubber ball, and there are lots of great colleges, right? Cheers.
HA! @OCDaddy I’m right there with you, but different sport. No one really graduates from a D3 to be a pro in that sport, but it doesn’t stop us from wanting the best opportunities for our kids. The NESCACs, with their great academics and love of sports are so tempting. In truth however, there are many great schools and keeping perspective is important (but hard).
This was not at all my experience and I think it’s why an athlete needs to take OVs seriously and really see if they mesh with the team. If you’re going to be miserable move on. There are plenty of rich kids at every school and plenty of them are nice and aware that not everyone can get starbucks 3x a day/7 days/week.
I don’t think the Williams clinic is a waste. She may not go to Williams but there will be other coaches there. If you can afford a camp, clinic, or showcase it is never a waste. You just don’t know who will be there. My daughter was (heavily) recruited by a D1 coach who happened to be a ref at a showcase (and reffed several of daughter’s games over the years). The school wasn’t right for D but the coach sure made my daughter feel good.
I know a lot of NESCAC/Ivy/top 20 school grads who have made a career in lacrosse. Coaches, refs, tournament organizers, pro athletes, journalists, retail store owners. They all know each other.
S19 was a recruit in a different non-revenue sport at high academic D1 level, but I think his experience is still applicable.
Coach level of interest changes, sometimes both directions from the same coach. It’s an elaborate puzzle they’re trying to put together. They are all looking at players better than your daughter hoping to get the better player. They are also all looking at people worse than your daughter as a back up plan if they can’t get your daughter. Add in positional needs and where students slot in academically and it gets even more complicated.
S received a rather generic letter addressed to him at the school from Stanford asking for him to fill out information on their website. He did, and sent their coach several emails all of which were unanswered. Six months later he got a phone call from a coach telling him he was one of their top recruits. No one could have seen that coming.
That leads me to another observation. These coaches are not all very organized. In fact our experience was that a few of the top programs had pretty well oiled machines. The majority were fairly disorganized. Part of that is due to the fact that especially at the D3 level you have a couple coaches trying to do what should be done by a staff of six. So things fall through the cracks.
I talked to coaches if we were there for an unofficial visit, although I did try to let S do most of the talking. There were a few coaches that talked to S and asked him to have me call them. All of them were pretty far along in the process. He was definitely a scholarship level player, and a large part of the call was the coaches making sure I was on board with him going to an Ivy and forgoing a scholarship. I think they also wanted to make sure I was supportive, but not going to be a pain in the rear for them either.
You definitely do want to talk to a coach in my opinion when they get to the offer level. Lots of kids misunderstand what the coach is saying. I’m pretty paranoid, so I made the coach repeat about four different ways that he was definitely positively unequivocally offering S a slot. He was laughing by the end of the conversation.
I agree this is important. Terminology is not the same from school to school, some coaches don’t communicate well anyway, and it’s all new for 17 year old.
DH also joined in on a couple of D19’s calls with different coaches to make absolutely sure things were clear, on both sides. These coaches were also understanding of his participation, and intent.
Really appreciate the insight from everyone. It’s been kind of a wake-up call, and I need to suggest she bump a few stale threads with several of the excellent non-NESCAC schools who seem to have genuine interest. Time to shift her focus there. I did get to watch a thrilling Middlebury-Colby men’s hockey game and dang, if it doesn’t work out I will miss those!
She is doing the Williams camp and Elite 180 and maybe she’ll play really well and catch someone’s eye. After that I shut off the clinic money tap forever! I could’ve gone to Europe for what I dumped into these *#%@ camps.
Been through the women’s lax process twice, once before the new rules and once after. Not for D3 though, although at Ds’ club there are a lot of D3 recruits.
My sense for the 2021s is that D3 is still wide open. Coaches have their lists, but typically are cagey about making offers until the D1s shake out. That should be some time this summer, so spring HS season and summer club season will be critical.
I would not rely too much on grades to make up for athletics. There are a ton of very good players with great grades who might just miss the Ivy cutoff but who will star for D3. So keep the grades up and work extra hard on the field!
Thanks @BobcatPhoenix! As to your last paragraph, I probably undersold her lacrosse skills. She plays on a good club team with several D1 and D2 commits and is one of their best players. Also started sophomore year on a very good Maryland HS team which competed against at least two nationally ranked teams. But point taken, and something I acknowledged in my original post.
Excellent grades are table stakes in the NESCAC, I get that. But there are bands for a reason so there must be some gradation, right? (We went to a NESCAC clinic recently and I almost fell off my chair when I heard one mom tell another that Princess had a sub-1000 SAT. Then she googled the average SAT and said “oh, she’s never getting in here”.)
@OCDaddy do you or your daughter have access to Naviance? If so you can look at the schools and you can see the outliers with lower scores/grades and know these are probably the athletic recruits. I know a soccer player who got into Williams with a 3.4 GPA.
@cinnamon1212 , we do. But way down here in the south (Baltimore/DC) we just don’t get enough NESCAC dots to make for meaningful analysis. But yes, I’ve haunted Naviance like a total spaz.
Are you saying a weekend in Midlothian Virginia is not as exciting as a weekend in Paris?