My son (senior in high school) has been offered baseball scholarships by a couple junior colleges. He also currently has coaches from a couple of 4 year schools trying to recruit him, keeping in regular contact with him, but he has not gone to those for official visits or been offered any specific $ yet. He is very interested in one of the junior colleges who have offered $, but they are really pushing him to sign a letter of intent NOW. I don’t feel like we’ve been able to figure out finances yet to a degree that I feel comfortable committing to a legal document…the college is in a rather expensive area and, without having heard results of academic/miscellaneous scholarships he’s applied for, we don’t even know if it’s feasible to be able to pay all his expenses. (We’d be on the hook for part of his tuition, all of his fees, all of his off campus living expenses cause there is no on campus housing). We also don’t know if it has a suitable academic program for what he wants to major in. He already has half of an associate degree through our local 4-year university completed through concurrent enrollment and it seems a huge waste to just leave that sitting on the table while he goes and works on academics that aren’t really tailored particularly well to his chosen field of study. There may be an academic plan that could be put together to accomplish this working with advisors at both the college he has his concurrent credit in and the community college, but we just have not had enough time to explore it in enough detail.
What we really want is more time to decide if it’s feasible/the best fit for him. I’m sure that makes it sound like he is flaky. It’s not that…one thing he knows is that he is very interested in playing baseball in their program. It’s the rest of the details that are fuzzy.
If he caves in and signs before he really wants to, what exactly does that mean? He has been told by his high school coaches to sign it and then if one of the 4-yr coaches comes through with an actual offer he wants more that he can totally just take it and inform the 2-year college and all is fine; he won’t have to sit out a year or anything since it’s going from junior college to a 4-year program. I thought if you sign a letter of intent other schools can’t recruit you anymore and that you have to inform the other schools who are recruiting you that you signed a letter of intent? How will he get any other offer in that case? And what if he doesn’t get other miscellaneous scholarship $ to stack onto the partial baseball one and we can’t afford to send him?
What would you do in this situation, where the kid really wants to play for that baseball program but doesn’t really think the academic offerings are a good fit and we have no idea with the time pressures whether we can actually swing this financially, dependent on whether he can get academic/miscellaneous scholarships to stack onto the baseball one? I hate the pressure to sign right now but don’t want to be the cause of them giving up on him and replacing him with someone else because he really is all in on the baseball part of this school. Help???
Don’t sign anything until you are comfortable with the details. Note that most two-year schools will cost less than 4 year schools…there are very few full ride baseball scholarships given out by 4 year programs, even full tuition is not common. After scholarship, you will have to look at each institution’s merit and/or need based financial aid offerings and policies.
Again, don’t sign until you figure this out, just tell the coach that you need time to do this. Note that your S’s dual enrollment credits may not receive any credit, let alone full credit, at any institution beyond the one they were earned at.
If he signs an NJCAA NLI he still can sign an NCAA NLI. Just be up front with all coaches, and of course, there will be consequences to this decision, not necessarily bad consequences, but you still need to understand various transfer rules, issues related to the NCAA NLI binding should he choose JUCO, etc. Go to a website called informed athlete.com, he has a good post on baseball double signing.
The NCAA (Div 1 and Div 2) have very specific rules about signing NLI and they can’t be done until Nov 13. If you sign an NLI, you cannot accept a scholarship from another NCAA NLI school without being released from your ‘signing’ schools. There are special rules for Ivy and service academies. You can go to those schools (any schools) but can’t play for the team or accept $$.
The junior colleges are in a different system. I wouldn’t trust the high school coach’s word on it but look into it. He might be right that you could go to a 4 year school in the NCAA system (or even the NAIA system which a lot of the southern baseball schools are in) but check, double check, and make sure.
There are a lot of balls in the air. The coaches at schools with good teams have a lot of power, but if you think your son is good enough for D1, there will be a better school with money for him. Baseball has specific rules about the roster size and players getting a certain amount (I think it is at least a 25% award for at least 3 years but I’m really not sure).
You might also consider D2. There are quite a few D2 baseball schools in Florida, Georgia, NC and SC. One thing that is nice about the Sunshine State conference is that the schools are close together and travel is minimized. That really makes a huge difference. Other schools travel to you for spring break tournaments. Lots of schools with a variety of majors, from medical focus, engineering, LACs. His choice really isn’t D1 or Jr College. Look at D2.
One thing I would like to add to my earlier post is what are your S’s baseball goals? Obviously that’s something to consider…especially if he is a top prospect/potentially draftable.
JUCO’s are a well accepted and traveled path to the draft, with a very high level of competition in some conferences. Also, many 4 year colleges bring in multiple JUCO grads as juniors every year…which can obviously impact a kid’s chances to play as an upperclassman at said schools (Tulane is an example of a school that brings in many JUCO players each year). All reasons why baseball recruiting can be tricky ?..so take your time and hopefully the coaches will give you that time.