Good advice so far and I agree that the whole concept of soft support will vary by school and program, some coaches will put in a plug with admissions, but some coaches don’t even deal with the concept of soft support—rather they say something like ‘if you get accepted on your own, you can run on the team’.
The big decision you will be faced with is if a coach does offer soft support, is that going to be enough reason to use your one ED bullet…soft support admit rates are likely significantly lower than that of slotted athletes, but probably greater than that of a completely unhooked ED applicant…but we don’t know that for sure. It’s fair to ask the offering coach what proportion of their soft support athletes are accepted in each admission round–athletes come through all rounds of admission, but most apply early and applying ED is often required for slotted or soft support student-athletes.