Swimming Recruiting for Int’l Jr. Targeting Highly Selective Colleges

Athletic Recruits
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#1 no one does this. Why would anyone declare a commitment to a school that has offered no formal support?

#2 legacy/development cases do not broadcast their status. They just show up on the roster after they have matriculated. Almost every Ivy roster has one…

I think the OP is missing the nuance of my post. For the top academic programs (Ivys), they need the average of their athletic programs to meet a certain threshold. Some sports with smarter athletes may balance off less smart sports, and within a team top performers with less good academics will be balanced off by lesser athletes with great academics. I have two ivy recruited kids (different sports), both were great students and top 10 nationally in their sports. In the recruitment process, their academics were used to help the coaches recruit the kids who were top 5 nationally. While neither of my kids were the best on their respective teams, they both were starters by their sophomore years. Not every recruit has to be disruptive to the starting line up in the first year.

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No student declares commitment as a walk-on. The early commitments are high-flyers who are actively recruited. I was simply responding to your question

As others have stated, each recruiting story is different, and some students simply don’t get recruited. I think you are searching for a perfect algorithm that will guarantee XYZ happens, but there really is no such formula to the process.

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Even in a sport like swimming, that has individual times which are clear cut (I’m so jealous of this), some coaches will see things differently from others. In a sport like soccer it is sometimes utterly confounding why some kids are the favorite recruits.

The most important lesson in recruiting is that it often just won’t make sense to you, the parent or athlete. This is why people here say recruiting is not for the faint of heart. So the answer to your question is that we have no idea and sometimes it won’t make sense.

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Thanks much…

As @one1ofeach and others remarked, every team/coach/athlete is different, therefore every journey works differently, and there is hardly a receipe that always works

But as @Lkunk498 noted, we search for a magic & methodical algorithm that can systematically guide current & future athletes & families in their journey with a high likelihood of success. There is no guarantee, just a process which substantially increases likelihood of success. That’s the best effort resulting from your collective feedback & comments:

  1. Eliminate schools where the athlete doesn’t see a good fit for whichever reason (academics/location/weather/school type/other vibe). Saves time!

  2. Start Early: recruiting starts earlier and earlier, so understand the process and prepare early.

  • ~20-25 schools is a good starting point
  • SAT/ACT (latest Spring of Junior Year)
  • Actively talk with coaches in Fall/Spring Junior Year
  • Commitments/Coach Suppport in Spring Junior Year
  • Pre-reads / NLI by summer or LL by fall
  • Submit ED/REA with coack support
  • Early admission by December
  • If not yet accepted, check for coaches seeking walk-on swimmers

  1. Over communicate: the coach is the decision maker. most high school athletes aren’t known to coaches: actively email & participate to competitions with exposure, repeatedly appear on their radar screens. only stop communicating if a coach expressively tells you so, or you have committed to another school team

  2. Performance: work/improve/perform, & communicate that performance l personal bests to coaches / assistant coaches

… that should land a swimming spot in the sport you love, and a university you love.

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You still aren’t understanding these. Pre-reads at some schools are done in the summer before applications (Ivies). Some schools might do them earlier. Some any not do them at all.

NLI are signed in November or later. The student may not have been admitted academically to the school. Student can only sign one, and it has to come with a scholarship that might be minimal (books, $2000k) but it has to be something. Therefore, there are no NLI for Ivies, service academies or D3 school.

LL are up to the admissions office, not the coach. Some schools don’t issue them. You should not expect one by the summer.

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Development players? Definitely, if you got the big cash to drop. Not saying good or bad, but they exist. Fairly easy to spot, but ain’t my business.

Declare commitment early on a “love to have/walk-on” basis?
That is really setting up your player for a big and embarrassing fall with her peers and friend groups. At best, your player might get a soft tip during ED, if the coach tells her that they will do this with admissions. But most likely, it is “come see me when you get in on your own” for a WALK-ON TRYOUT.

My D witnessed a walk-on tryout scenario for an “accepted to the school on her own” '22 player at the school ID camp for '23s. According to my D, it was brutal and basically they told the '22 player that she wasn’t ready for college ball. Fortunately, the school was awesome and really high on my D’s list. But we do not know if the '22 came to school for school or soccer or both. Tears and downcast, red eyes.

I can not stress enough the seriousness of recruiting for some coaches. It is their rice bowl. Some coaches have “professorships” with fancy titles with salary and benefits.
This isn’t club level politics with moms flirting with the coaches and dads talking bs. Like real life with bills to pay.
I sense too much flippancy and honestly, unrealistic scenarios.

There are two types of conversations which my D both faced: Seriously interested versus keep in touch. Examples of seriously interested: A coach told my my D after seeing her at showcase that they will fully support her and they will keep a spot open. My D just needs to like the school and let them know she will apply. They are the ones who kept contact with her and her status. Coaches who offered her full support during ED2/EA if her ED fails.

Keep in touch example: They are still creating the list and adding players. We are interested and we need to evaluate players. Keep in touch with updates, film, etc. Blah blah blah.
These can be big time sucks and lead to nowhere, but this is really par for the course for most schools. Classic musical chairs scenario. This is where you really need to realistic where your player fits in the program, not what you want to believe.

Target correctly and move on when it doesn’t fit. For crying out loud, stop the analysis paralysis!!! Good luck.

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Yep, and the vast majority of schools don’t send LLs to recruited athletes. Ivies won’t send an LL before Oct 1, and the admissions committees only sends LLs to recruited athletes whose complete app is received by then. Sometimes an Ivy recruited athlete who submits their app on or near the ED/SCEA deadline doesn’t even receive an LL before admissions decisions come out.

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despite @twoinanddone opinion that we “still don’t understand”, we believe we understand 99% of the process clearly, and simply aim to share our recommendations with current/future athletes and parents. Our indicative timeline stands. Of course what candidates aim for (coach support, pre-reads, NLI, LL) is neither easy to achieve nor guaranteed, but these guideline help along the way.

we’re not consultants or advisers, have no conflicts of interest, don’t aim to tell people they are wrong, ignorant, or don’t understand. we simply aim to share positive information with the athletic community seeking college admission, and wish them perseverance, luck and success.

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No one on this thread is a consultant or advisor, and no one has any conflict of interest.

Other posters on this thread are those who have successfully gone through the recruiting process, and are paying it forward by helping those who are currently going through the process, like your family.

Have you read other threads in the Athletic Recruiting forum? Most don’t have posters telling newbies that they don’t understand or are ignorant. Also, most newbies don’t attempt to give others advice, since they haven’t yet seen the process through to the end.

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To put a finer point on some of the issues being discussed.

  1. While a candidate for recruitment may get several LL offers, it is only good form to accept one. As the acceptance of a LL comes well in advance of the application and actual issuance of the LL, it is a verbal contract and when made after July 1st before senior year is considered binding.

The acceptance of more than one LL can cause many problems for the recruiting ecosystem and have a domino effect in a given recruiting year.

  1. It is always better to send too many emails than not enough.

  2. Nothing is ever done until the LL is received.

Some fun (in hindsight) anecdotes:

My older son was a late bloomer in his sport and didn’t get recruitable results until his junior year. By then, many coaches had already made their picks and we were going into the summer before senior year with a lot of unanswered emails. In our sport there is a summer championship (with many college coaches attending) that determines their final national ranking for the year, and many kids announce their binding commitments at that time (July 1).

Our son had a breakout performance at that championship. The top candidate that year, both athletically and academically, was widely expected to go to the most prestigious Ivy, but surprised everyone with the July 1st announcement he would go to the Ivy with the most dominant record. This caused a domino effect in our recruiting class where all commitments made up until that point had been non-binding (for both sides), and the school who thought they had recruited the top guy (and stopped answering emails from potential recruits) had a big hole in the plans. While this coach had not answered many of our son’s emails before the summer, he was in immediate contact on July 2nd. In the month after that summer championship, our son received 4 LL offers, and ultimately accepted one of them. Ironically, the coach whose offer we accepted confessed that he never answered emails (as english was not his first language), but did answer phone calls and met most students/parents when they came up to him at competitions. Wish we had known that earlier as we thought there was no interest from this program.

Our younger son attended a summer camp run by his first choice school between his sophomore/junior year and the head coach told us at the end that while he could not promise anything, he liked our son and wanted to recruit him. We were thrilled until January of junior year when we learned that he had extended two LL offers (which had been accepted) to some juniors who were higher-ranked. We were crushed. In February, our son was offered a LL from another Ivy, but it was not one where there was an academic fit. The coach there said we had some time to think about it and he would tell us when he needed our firm commitment. We pressed programs at other schools for any interest and everyone said they had their 1st choice LL offers out, so they could not make any further offers until they had answers from their 1st choices. In early April (of junior year), the coach who made our son his only LL offer said he needed an answer by the end of the week. That was a long week as our son did not want to go to that school, but it was the only offer we had. Just before we were scheduled to call the coach to accept the LL offer, we had our son call the coach of his first choice school to tell him he would be accepting another school’s offer. On that phone call, the coach of the first choice school told him that one of the kids who accepted his LL offer had just withdrawn (to join the military) and if our son wanted the LL, it was his. That was a great day.

I guess my msg to the OP is, there is no formula, and success can come at different times and in different ways. Just don’t give up hope, stay in it, and exhaust every option before October 1st.

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I can understand where @NiVo is coming from. Like most of us who have gone through the process, we are trying to make sense of the whole thing and optimize the chances for our kids, and in one sense, predict the unpredictable. He/she is trying to reduce everything to a formula, and it just doesn’t work that way. Each kid, each sport, each school and each coach is different. There are certain timelines and steps dictated by NCAA/conference rules, but once your kid proceeds through the funnel and it gets narrower, the recruit experience becomes more individually specific and is affected by variables outside the control of the recruit, including the needs of each coach for that year’s recruiting class based upon returning athletes, the other recruits competing for the limited spots and any subjective opinion the coach has made about the recruits (potential, fit with teammates, attitude…).

To me it comes down to being realistic about your kids’ athletic ability relative to others (timed individual sports are easier than team sports), academic and general school fit and clear communication with coaches and the ability to not let wishful thinking affect your assessment.

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It sounds like you are conflating a Ivy coach offering a fully supported slot with a LL…they are not the same thing.

I don’t know how a student-athlete could verbally commit to more than one program when the quid is often an application in the early round, at least at Ivy League schools which I assume you mean since we are talking LLs (some D3s also send out LLs, but not all that many). Verbal commitments are not binding on the coach, the school, nor the athlete. Some student-athletes do publicize that they ‘have committed to the process’ at an Ivy league school, but most ok that with the coach first.

Once the committed student-athlete applies to their Ivy league school, only then can admissions review the app and send an LL (and not before Oct 1 of senior year).

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While highly unethical, there have been cases where very sought-after HS athletes accept more than one LL, which ultimately causes unavoidable problems down the line. I have witnessed several instances of this, and it is important for families to know that it can happen as it can affect coaches priorities over many programs, not to mention how families prioritize their schools.

The timeline for recruiting has become so early a LL might be offered/accepted in junior year before any firm academic milestones can be identified. As everyone knows, LLs can only be sent our after a full application is sent in early senior year (usually Sept/Oct). This is the gap when non-binding can be a four letter word.

Problems can occur when a highly sought-after recruit, whether enamored with all the attention, or just has no experience saying no, gives more than one coach the idea that they have committed to their respective program. Coaches will make their additional recruiting plans based on the idea that they have the their top recruit secured and the multi-committer does not have to make a real decision until the ED/EA application is due in September. In the cases I am aware of, some coaches don’t find out their top recruit isn’t coming until they realize no EA/ED application has been submitted. Obviously, by fall of senior year is too late for many coaches to initiate discussion with top recruits, and at the same time top athletes may have already made decisions based on what programs had available spots junior year.

This sort of unethical behavior can have far reaching ramifications and is why coaches now talk more to each other than before. The families who do this are very selfish as it can put the club team and coach they are affiliated with is a really bad light.

At the same time, it is important that all recruits keep open communication with all coaches. As commitments are only binding after July 1st before senior year, bad behavior, while not frequent is possible.

Obviously, for the tippy top recruits, the process can be pretty straightforward, however if you are recruitable, but not the one everyone wants, it is important to be aware of all the possible wrinkles and to be prepared for them.

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Again, this doesn’t make sense. You are conflating verbal commitments (which can happen before junior year in most sports) with LLs (which are primarily offered by Ivy League schools).

Yes, there are some bad apples who lead coaches to believe they might be committed and have no intention of applying to that school. The reality is students break commitments, coaches leave and the new coach doesn’t honor the previous verbal commitment, and on and on. That’s why recruiting for many sports remains active in the Fall and into RD, even at the Ivies (which I assume you are talking about since you keep referring to LLs).

Verbal commitments are never binding, not for the student, or the coach, or the school.

.

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@Mwfan1921

Just trying to be helpful.

As I have said, there is a difference when LLs are offered/accepted vs when one is sent/received.
While all both are important steps, the one where a LL is sent by admissions and received by the applicant is the is the critical one.

I am not sure you know what conflating means.

While my athletic recruiting experience is over a wider span of years, (2015 and 2020), I believe what I have offered is still relevant and useful. For my first son in 2015, it was widely accepted that offers made after July 1st before senior year could be considered binding if a positive pre-read had been accomplished. I am not sure if this is still the case, but the recruiting process has gotten earlier and earlier.

But what do I know? I only have two kids successfully recruited by their top choice Ivys.

Not sure why you are so disageeable, but I have shared my experience for the benefit of the OP and will leave the rest to you.

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Not trying to be disagreeable, just trying to use correct terminology for those reading these boards which IMO is important as athletic recruiting and the related terminology can be tricky. Coaches do not offer LLs, they offer the athlete their full support through the admissions process.

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I also think that your terminology of Likely Letter (LL) is being incorrectly used. A LL is only sent by the admissions department AFTER a complete application is submitted. There is no way a LL can be given earlier than October of Senior year. During junior year, a coach may offer “full support” or “an admissions slot” which would ultimately lead to a LL. But the coach does not offer a LL. Coaches have nothing to do with likely letters. They come only from admissions.

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I have $20 that says they do.

What you said is wrong. Likely letters are offered/sent by admissions, not coaches, and are never sent before October of senior year.

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If an Ivy coach offers your athlete recruiting support and the question “does that include a LL (from admissions)” is not asked by your or your athlete, you do not have a complete answer.

Not all recruiting offers include a LL.

To say coaches can not offer LLs is splitting hairs. Only Admission can confer a LL and a LL can only be sent after a full application has been completed, but a coach can tell you if his offer of support includes one.

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No coach can answer that question accurately. They can say that they will recommend a LL, but they do not have the final day as to who actually gets one.

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