Ok guys, looks like we’ve reached the next stage in this recruiting process. My daughter has received her first invite for an official visit.
Her sport is swimming. The school is across the country, DIII. I know that we get to pay for it all
What can we expect? She can’t swim with the team, right? Any visit will require a full day of travel on either end, so missing 4 days of practice is a concern, she’ll also need to log in to do some work for an online class she’s taking, there will be some time for that I hope.
Sleep in a student room? Visit a class? Anything else we should know about or prepare for as we get these trips scheduled in?
She’ll probably go to a game or event with the team. She’ll eat in the cafeteria. She’ll stay with a kid on the team. She might swim with the team if they have an unofficial “captains’s practice”. or something like that. She can workout in the gym. They’ll probably head out at night, maybe to a party or hang out.
When mine went to a D3 visit, I dropped her off with the coach (and a teammate host). She went to a class, she ate lunch and dinner with her host. She was supposed to go to a captain’s practice (it was the fall, for a spring sport) but it rained. She went to a party that night, to an a capella show at the school (really liked that), and then on Saturday I met with her to go on a ‘public’ tour of the school. She then went to a field hockey game (in the rain) and we left later that night.
I think your daughter could arrange to swim while she’s there, but it can’t be at an official practice and the coaches can’t watch. They’ll know the rules so just tell them she needs some pool time over the 2 days (visit can only last 48 hours on campus). To save on time, she could fly in on a redeye and arrive on Friday morning, and out Sunday morning.
RightCoaster is exactly right. Almost the exact itinerary my D had when visiting a DIII school for an overnight as a recruit. There was a class visit and an arranged interview with the academic dept head as well.
Ok, so from those that have done this, what is she looking for? Questions to ask? Things to avoid? We have visited campus and received a pretty thorough tour from the coach when we were there a couple of months ago.
Congrats on getting to this stage of the process! It is exhausting, but exciting.
Broadly, my D3 kid (soccer) found that typical visits as a recruit included: coach meeting with athlete and at least some of it with the parent, lunch with asst. coach and some team members, class with team member, admissions interview with opportunity for parent questions at the end of it, down time in a team member’s room with a bunch of the team, watch practice/match (could not participate). We heard from several programs that the “down time” with team members was a key element of the visit – was this prospie a good teammate? My kid was in his own sports season during fall visits so we often left at night, rather than have him stay over in the dorm, to get him back for his own matches – when he did stay, some times the coach provided an air mattress and bedding so he wasn’t literally on the floor, which was nice.
Since you are looking at a cross country trip with a lot of disruption to her fall schedule, could you perhaps use the scheduled trip as a way to circle back with other coaches in that region to see the status of their process?
You definitely want the opportunity to hang with current team members, and watch a practice if possible to get team “vibe” and any clues as to coaching style. I also agree with @Midwestmomofboys – the coach for my Ds team asks for feedback from the student hosts about fit of the prospect with the team dynamic. My Ds coach focuses very much on team fit as well as skills, but that’s definitely not true of all coaches.
In an ideal world there is one other team we’d love to circle back to that is only a few hours away, yes. But it’s a bit early to clarify that point with that team -they’ve said they start scheduling fall visits in July. We’re not done with school here yet (2 more weeks!) and we were planning to update with end of year transcripts before July 1.
Here’s a question I haven’t seen yet - “official visits”can’t start until after the first day of school senior year, right? Does this apply to DIII too? What happens if there is a teacher’s strike? This is a contract negotiation year for our teacher’s union, and I’ve got a bad feeling about this one for us…
I forgot to add that the coach will most likely want to visit with you for a few minutes and this gives you an opportunity to check the coach out and ask any questions you have regarding recruiting, studies, team travel, dorms, schedules etc.
I also forgot to mention that sometimes the coach might set up an interview with someone in admissions. This happened to us a few times. You might be able to meet with admissions too, I was asked to so I complied.
Things to avoid: Probably having your kid throw up from drinking too much, lol. Being an annoying helicopter parent in front of the coach.
Before you leave you should talk or text with your kid to see if they liked their visit. If they did like it, during your final meeting with the coach before you say goodbye you can ask the coach where things stand in terms of recruiting if they have not covered it already. If your kid is so-so about the place, just say thanks for arranging everything and your kid will stay in touch.
No issues with drinking for my kid. She doesn’t like the taste of alcohol, and recently she genuinely asked me why people get drunk - she doesn’t get it LOL. Must have been switched at birth!
We pointed out that my brother doesn’t like alcohol and was the designated driver the whole time he was in college and that he turned out OK :).
My son was sort of worried what to do. Drink and have the coach find out which might not be good. Don’t drink and seem like a noob. I think one time he drank a beer and another time said he didn’t feel like it, and the kid he was hanging with was fine with it. I think they hung out, got some food, and played some video games. My son did say that he went to an off campus house where a bunch of the guys on the team lived and they were having a party. He said some of them were partying pretty hard and he didn’t really the guys all that much.
If your daughter doesn’t want to drink or go to parties, she needs to have a way to handle that as it is likely the team will take her to a party where there will be drinks offered. Or more.
My 16 year old was shocked when she went to Smith and was asked a lot of personal questions. What pronoun would you prefer? Are you gay? Are you sure you’re not gay? Really? She was offered beer, liquor, more. She knew her host from high school and the host was also a very young and shy girl, so she wasn’t abandoned at the party. It was a little too much for my daughter at 16. I wish I’d been more prepared and been able to prepare her more. She was the one who invited me to the public tour (I was staying in a hotel). The coach was not very good at including me in the visit or the discussions at all. My daughter didn’t go there.
My daughter’s coach doesn’t even introduce the recruits to the team. Her choice. She doesn’t care if they fit together. It seems to work out and most become friends.
Others may be able to confirm, but I thought NCAA D3 allows official visits after Jan of 11th grade – so she doesn’t need to have actually “started” senior year if there is a strike.
@jmtabb Congrats! Our S had three OVNs and here’s how they went:
As a parent, I felt at ease when we met the coach when he was dropped off, when the coach gave us a copy of the itinerary, and when the coach had us sign papers protecting the school and our kid. We had 2 schools do that. He was scheduled every minute of the day at those 2, and one he had an interview scheduled. It was very professionally done.
At a 3rd, we barely got a hello from the coach (who was late). No papers to sign, etc. When I asked, I got, “We know where to find you” Huh??? Nothing as far as meeting one on one with our S or any other recruit that whole weekend. No itinerary, no information. It was a huge party. Our S withdrew his application after he got in to #1.
A few things to look for:
Have your daughter take note of the team dynamic. How do they interact with each other - do they seem to get along, or not? Do they like the coach(es)? (They’ll generally have no problem divulging that info…). Do they seem happy with their school and their choice - again - kids will generally tell. We found that our son could tell almost immediately from the weekend as well who was really serious about the school and who’s just there testing the waters, adding it on to their list, but not a top choice.
Treat the weekend/OVN like an interview. She’s interviewing them and they are doing the same. All she says and does can be (and in many cases will be) reported back to the Head Coach - including how interested she is and other schools she’s looking at. The kids will flat out ask. We advised our son not to divulge any specific info regarding his top choice at any of the visits - keep it generic. The swim world is small and word travels. And, to always keep in mind that, especially if you’re looking at schools in the same league, you never know where another coach may end up.
Also, if the kids are involved in sketchy behavior with a recruit, that just tells me a lot about the team dynamic…everyone should want to put their best foot forward from coach, to team, to recruit.
Everyone’s trying to see if the puzzle piece fits - sometimes it doesn’t at all, sometimes one part fits, and sometimes it looks to fit perfectly…don’t burn bridges…
Be prepared to sleep on a floor hahaha
Tell her to have fun - it’s a great experience!
If your weekend doesn’t include it, try and get there for a meet if possible - or to see them in action somewhere. That might be hard cross-country, but if it can be done, we found it to be invaluable and it really sealed the deal for our son - he could realistically see where he “fit”.
@Ohiodad51: I know the “thread builder” threads are closed, but I think “OVs — what to expect/dos/don’ts” would be a good post to include in your general thread.
As far as the visit per se, I am not sure that there is a lot to prepare for. You have gotten a lot of good advice from the other posters. Since you have more than one visit, as the others have suggested, use this as the opportunity that it is – letting your daughter peek under the hood and see if she likes the coach, likes the team and likes the school. It is far more than most non-recruit applicants will get before submitting applications.
If you will accompany your daughter, you may want to work out in advance what you will be doing while your daughter is having a great weekend with potential teammates. You may want to brings some things to keep yourself occupied. I have recollections of multiple tours of college libraries, shopping in useless college town boutiques and generally counting the minutes until I arguably could partake in the next meal.
Two things to ask in advance. First, does the coach want to meet with you and your daughter at the end of the weekend. This is fairly typical, and you should be prepared to get the coach to commit to the usual suspect questions. Will my daughter get in, how many are you recruiting this year, where is my daughter on that list of recruits, will she have a roster spot, will she need to try out, where do you anticipate her fitting in, is she expected to apply early decision, how do we learn about financial aid (most likely the coach will punt on this one). Please note, the coach will expect these questions and they must be asked for you to get any kind of true assessment of fit with the team.
Second, should your daughter bring a sleeping bag. As @kjs1992 suggests, otherwise she may be sleeping on a never vacuumed rug with an extra thin throw blanket to keep her “warm.”
My son had to fly into all of his OVs since we live in flyover land and the schools he visited were all on the left and right coasts. We scheduled all his OV’s where he flew out Thursday and came home Saturday or Sunday to minimize time from school. We let him go by himself because we felt it was time for him to start handling these types of things independently, from travel to interacting with adults and peers. The common themes were that he spent a good deal of time with the head coaches talking about his fit with the team, the process and the school and where else he was considering. He stayed with a potential teammate and hung out with them socially. It seemed as if the teams pretty much hung out together. The coaches were all thoughtful enough to ask him his academic interests beforehand and paired him with team members that had classes in his areas of interest. For him, the experience was all about fit academically and athletically, so I think he was more in “absorb” mode instead of “recruit me” mode. He brought his baseball glove, but I don’t think he ever used it.
Great points above. Here are a few questions that former swimmers told my D to ask:
What is the practice schedule like during the season, off season, breaks, and the summer? Some of the women were expected to attend summer school once or twice for more coaching for example.
How do they manage the balance between academics and swimming? Get specific. Do they prefer certain easier majors? Is it OK to miss practice to study? Do they take missed tests while traveling?
What do I have to do to make the travel team? Some schools have bigger budgets that let them bring a lot of swimmers while other teams bring the bare minimum.
Thanks all! We confirmed back to the coach overnight and have dates for the visit. The coach is recommending red eye flights in both directions, has said they can arrange transport to/from from the airport. The coach is giving us the impression that we could send her on her own - without a parent.
Funnily enough, my husband’s first comment before we got back the coach’s e-mail was that we could both go and have the time together while she did the OV. So I went to bed thinking this would be a 3 man trip and woke up to the idea that it might be my daughter alone. She’s a seasoned traveller so the airport/flights alone don’t concern us but it was a little unexpected. Just trying to get used to the idea that she’ll be doing these things on her own pretty soon anyway but thinking one of us should travel with her this time still.
So now we’re confirmed for this OV, and will start figuring out transport. Super exciting times!
hahaha