I don’t know swimming but… I find it hard to believe that any coach is going to hold a spot until November 1st and certainly not til spring. My kid’s offers had a short timeline, and those were much much earlier. There was room to negotiate a longer time, but my kid was also aware of the full domino effect. Coaches just can’t keep slots open forever, they have to move onto the next recruit at some point. That said, my kid also heard: “if you change your mind then come back to me and I’ll find a way to make it work.” But definitely not “take all the time you want.”
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We have to remember that she is an international student and this may be the best they can do since a visit is not viable.
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Agreed, but suggesting in this case the Zoom may be part of the coach/team vetting, and not for the benefit of the recruit - and an official offer hasn’t been made.
Official offer is obviously not the same as “we have a positive vibe” from the coach.
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While the spot on the team may be there for the swimmer should they get in, that is not the same as a supported slot.
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That is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? OP has been vague. But “we want you on the team, what to you need to help you decide?” is not unheard of, particularly when OVs are not offered.
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The OP could easily preserve the anonymity of the schools while providing substantive detail about what these claimed offers are. I don’t know why he chooses not to. It certainly leads me to skepticism too about these offers.
They could range from an offer of a walk-on spot if accepted, to a fully coach-supported ED1 application. Or maybe in one or more cases, there’s not a formal offer yet and the coach is waiting on commitment decisions from priority recruits who will be doing overnight visits in the next two weeks or so.
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D24 is committed to complete the discussion she’s got outstanding before making a final commitment decision. One coach confirmed no support this week, and 2 other discussions will lead to a positive/negative conclusion this week. She’s already eliminated the possibility of being recruited at CMC/Pomona.
Hopefully by next week, she intends to commit to take the offer out of the 3-5 offers on hand.
I would agree that the a coach could hold a spot for certainly more than 1-week and up close to the ED or EA deadline. This was a different sport and an Ivy, so a bit different, but my kid did not decide and commit to the coach & school until after OVs Sept & Oct, which seemed to be fairly common.
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Quite the impossibility when these are two different teams! Pomona-Pitzer swims as one team; CMC swims with Scripps and Harvey Mudd.
Our experience, not swimming, were offers made in September/beginning of Oct at the end of each OV. The coaches requested a reply as soon as possible, but had no problem waiting until after the last OV scheduled that my kid let them know about. The coach at the last OV asked for a response within 2 weeks, so before the Nov ED deadline. I think it is still too early for exploding offers in most cases, maybe different for different sports and maybe desirability of specific athlete.
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Totally sports-dependent. It does sound like swimming runs later than some sports.
In soccer, though, most recruiting is over by the end of August, including D3. Weak programs and weak recruits do continue recruiting into the fall, admittedly.
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Makes sense, our sport, baseball, had some major camps/tournaments through early August. Size/strength pretty critical these days and some boys develop later than others. For my daughter, it seemed recruiting wrapped up earlier, especially the D1 programs, but this was prior to the most recent contact rules.
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It does. Until the change a few years ago, coaches couldn’t talk to swimmers until end of Jr year.
Most coaches hate the new timeline. It is particularly bad on the boys side since you often see a lot of physical development Jr year. And you also see kids that top out. It’s not like a team sport where your skills don’t all of a sudden go backwards.
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I would urge the OP to get involved and speak directly to the coaches who have made bonafide offers. If he is getting all his information only from his daughter, he may not have the full picture as kids only hear what they want to hear, and may not fully understand all the recruitment vocabulary.
To the dozen or so of us on this thread who have successfully been thru this process, there are too many holes/inconsistencies in the timeline/verbiage/etc in the OP’s recounting of their odyssey to make one confident (as he is) that a successful outcome is around the corner.
Obviously the OP is international and his communication skills are not strong, but there are too many open questions for someone who claims to be close to a recruiting commitment.
Given the manner the OP has used the term “offer”, it may be worth defining that term.
In athletic recruiting, an offer means the college coach is offering the student a spot on the team and will work with Admissions to secure acceptance. In most cases, this requires the student apply EA/ED taking all other suitors out of the game.
So glad this thread was reopened. With the writer’s strike, this is better than watching reruns.
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Could you please for the love just answer specifically “offer”. I will make it an easy yes or no. Does this mean that your daughter was offered full support in the application process if she applies ED even before the coach knows what other swimmers will commit for sure (i.e. before the unofficial visits happening)?
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Wait - I think I misunderstood.
I originally read that she would be committing next week. What does “commit to take the offer out of” mean? Like she intends to wrangle a position out of the coach? This language is so confusing to me.
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I *think this means she’s deciding between 3-5 offers and will take one of them. So 1 out of the 3-5 that exist. But it’s still unclear how many exist. Is it 3? Or 4 or 5?
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Got it. That makes more sense.
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At this point, those two other coaches are likely waiting for recruits with scheduled overnight visits
In the next two weeks or so to make their decisions. Then depending on those, there could be another round of overnight visits later in September.
One problem is that the three coaches who have made offers (if those are indeed actual offers for full coach support in exchange for an ED app), will also want to move down their lists soon, so it’s probably not Iikely to be able to hold them off while waiting for possible action from the two apparently more desirable programs.
In other words, it’s not open-ended. As an example, my D23 had a case where a coach at one of her top 3 choices told her they were holding a spot for her but other recruits were in play and if one told the coach they wanted to commit, the coach would essentially provide notice to my D with a kind of “right of first refusal” to get a commitment from her or not with a one-day notice. In this case, she was a higher-value recruit for that particular program: a marginal candidate would likely not have been afforded the same luxury.
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No every program does OVs. We are not talking about particularly competitive swim programs - who knows what kind of funding they have?
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