<p>My S received an OV invite from a school he has had no contact with and never filled out a recruitment form for. I am wondering if this is more of a fishing expedition for the school who could have sent out hundreds of invites to see if they get any takers rather than real interest in my S. Has anyone else experienced this?</p>
<p>Not sure it’s the same thing since all the schools are D3, but we have had several schools email, leave messages and text asking our son to come to a home game and overnight with the team, all schools we have really not had any previous contacts with. OVs might be quite a different story, though, if it means they are paying for it.</p>
<p>I know with d3 players pay their own way and we have four unofficial overnights set up. For our reach school I thought this was a very good sign that son’s academics were looking passable until I spoke with another family yesterday whose son went on an overnight to the same school last year. They said they had him there even though they knew his academics were NOT currently passable, hoping that by ED2 he would get them up (scores mostly) in time to get in. His last take of the SATs was January his senior year and it still didn’t work out, so he is somewhere else now.</p>
<p>An offer of an OV to a D1 school is not extended willy nilly. The number of OVs a schools may offer is limited by NCAA regulations (and some schools’ budgets may not even allow that number).</p>
<p>There are many ways a school finds athletes - questionnaires are only one way. Club and school coaches are another. Meets and showcases are another. Coaches moving from one school - where the athlete was known - to a new school is another.</p>
<p>Recruiting has lots of twists and turns often leading to unexpected places. I’d look up the school and see if it interests your athlete. But remember, the athlete is also limited in the number of OVs he/she can accept.</p>
<p>This was a D1 school and they actually sent him 2 emails, one addressed to his first name and one addressed to his last name. Each had a unique number on it. It just seemed a little random but it does appear to be a good match for him academically and athletically so we will consider it.</p>
<p>Yes, we had a similar experience with a D1 school where first contact from the coach included a OV invite. In our case, the coach was looking for particular performance stats and then contacted all who met the criteria. If the school looks like it is a good fit, I wouldn’t worry too much about how many others get the offer as much as how many actually take the OV. As others have pointed out, for D1 you can take 5 visits so you need to answer a lot of questions before getting in the car/getting on the plane. As a parent I assumed that all serious communication would first require a phone call, but that was not always the case. Many of the coaches we interacted with used mainly e-mail, text and social media to communicate with my S (I think it is a generational thing…).</p>