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<p>Absolutely agree. We did visit one school this past summer and I (and she) have no issue with visiting a college during the summer.</p>
<p>We had other issues with the visit (discussed in another thread) but none associated with the season.</p>
<p>Golffather,
That’s what I thought when I convinced her to visit the big schools. But by the time OV#4 was done and she said she is not feeling it (her own words), I was panicking. The small school was the last one she visited. Luckily, she likes it and everything works out. For D2 ( who is a 9th grader), we need to do more UVs. We had planned to do that with D1 in the summer after junior yr, but her coach specifically told her not to plan any vacation in case she qualifies for JN. Well, I am not going to listen to him now with d2 .</p>
<p>“sometimes a year at a good prep school can do wonders for a prospective Division 1 athlete”
A year at junior college/community college uses a year of college eligibility but a post-grad year at a prep school does not. (Look at Hargrave Military Academy’s football and basketball programs.)</p>
<p>^^^^ Thanks!</p>
<p>I am glad I found this site…very encouraging to hear similar situations. Fishymom and springisintheair and momof2010…thanks for all the great advise. Both H and I have put lots of hours in helping our D through the application and recruiting process. It has been a long endless process. Number one she is VERY humble and shy and has a hard time throwing herself out there. ( Im not) But she is extremely talented and works very hard and we know that she has what it takes to make the team. Lately she has been better about e-mailing the coaches and updating them on her process, such as current competitions, college acceptances etc… She had a bit of a let down when she did not get any OV this fall and some of her friends and competition did. We were beginning to think any OV’s would not happen. : ( Fortunately a few weeks ago she was contacted by the number 1 school of her choice for an OV in Jan. and then another… ( thank God ) now she is walking on air!!! Amazing what one e-mail can do for a kid to boost their confidence. Keeping our fingers crossed that a NLI is in her very near future because she has worked so hard for it……as have we!!! LOL!!!</p>
<p>Very exciting, congratulations… Sounds like the initial OV’s did not come due to her lack of communicating her interest. Glad to hear she has realized it is an important part of the process. Good luck.</p>
<p>The single biggest mistake we made was not finding out earlier in the process how much scholarship money was available. The NCAA loves to report that in a given sport there are x number of D1 schools offering that sport, times y number of scholarships allowed, implying that this means that are x times y scholarships. Wrong, wrong, wrong, no!</p>
<p>We learned the hard way that just because the NCAA allows a certain number of scholarships doesn’t mean that a given college offers that number. One school we looked was my DD’s top choice academically. We did an UV while on vacation, a six hour drive from where were were staying. This school was listed on the main college guide for our sport as offering scholarships. When she got there, the coach offered her a spot on the team, pretty much guaranteed admission (DD was a top student and NMF, so no worries there), and then dropped the bomb that they had less than one scholarship to split among the whole team. It would barely cover books. So yes, technically it was a scholarship program, but the characterization is misleading at best.</p>
<p>Several others schools she looked at were also less than fully funded. She got several offers of 5K to 10K. No thank you. It would have been nice to know that before we spent a grand per visit on plane tickets and hotels.</p>
<p>On the topic of how involved I got, I did most of the research, kept records and stats, updated her resume, and acted as secretary by hitting send on the email updates. However I made sure my DD wrote all the emails herself. She had some very nice dialogs with the coaches and it was important to us that these remained genuine. We also wanted her to be invested in the process.</p>