If my DD attended a national camp for filed hockey last year as an incoming HS freshman, should she return to the same camp (offer extended) or seek a similar camp elsewhere? The first one was with an ivy and she would like to attend that school but is afraid of becoming enmeshed with one program.
Why not get some variety and additional exposure by going to different camp?
You should also look into whether the camp she attended was part of the college or just the college coach earning extra money over the summer and renting the facilities from the college. I suspect it was probably the latter. Either way she did get time with the coach but you really don’t know for sure whether that will stillbe there when she is applying to colleges.
(I have a daughter playing field hockey at a D3 college right now. We have recent experience with this.)
Cast a wide net.
If your daughter is playing on a club team this is easier. She needs to attend regional and national recruiting tournaments. Those are the places where she will have the opportunity to be seen by many coaches D1-D3. She needs to contact coaches (via email) of programs she might be interested in to introduce herself, provide links to her stats, to let them know where she will be competing, let them know that she is interested in that coach’s program. As the tournament schedules come out she should send the exact schedule (with exact times, field locations and her jersey number) to every coach (of programs that she is interested in) who will be attending. Tournaments post lists of attending coaches. D1 coaches will not respond to her emails. D3 coaches might.
After tournaments she should send follow-up emails as well. She should respond to any coach who contacts her.
She should contact coaches to ask for tours and meetings. D1 coaches in particular are limited in their abilities to initiate meetings.
For highly ranked young players specific camps can help, but I would never advise anyone to think that camps are the best way to get seen or to get recruited. Most players at camps are there for instruction. The head coach is running the camp, not looking at players she doesn’t already have her eyes on.
You can’t count on anything at this point, unless you have a verbal offer. And even then, things happen. I know two seniors right now (two different women’s sports) who had been “recruited” but didn’t get accepted to the college itself, so the fact that the coach wanted them only got them so far. (Highly ranked colleges with D3 sports.)
Also ask in the athletics subforum:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/
Thank you for your responses! I’ll also post in the athletics section.