Track and Field Recruiting Timeline?

Athletic Recruits
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<p>My daughter is about to start her sophomore season in track. When should we really start concentrating on recruiting? Is it too early to contact coaches now? I was surprised at the number of kids in soccer who had already committed to a school before the end of their junior year. </p>

<p>Also, has anyone had a good experience with a site like be recruited? Is there one site that is better than others for track and field athletes?</p>

<p>My daughter would love to run D1, but I am not sure that her times will be up to par. My thoughts are soccer skill and ability is more subjective, whereas track times are objective. A soccer player would need to work harder at contacting coaches and showcasing herself, whereas a track athlete either has the times or not. Is this right or am I totally wrong?</p>

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<p>Great question. I don’t have answers myself, but I’ll be following this thread with great interest.</p>

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<p>It’s never to early to start looking into schools but I am not sure when you can start talking to coaches as many schools have a rule where coaches can’t talk to students they might recruit before their junior or sophomore year of high school. Not sure which one it is.</p>

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<p>The track recruiting timetable is generally slower than soccer. D is a D1 track athlete and she sent the first introductory emails in fall of Junior year. She was basically recruited off her marks from Junior year outdoor. </p>

<p>You’re correct that track recruiting is primarily driven by times, heights and distances and your marks are accessible to the coach on milesplit and athletic.net.</p>

<p>Recruiting sites are not needed in the process.</p>

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<p>Thank you for all of the replies! I was really hoping we hadn’t fallen behind. The coach-athlete contact restrictions are a bit confusing. I think I probably need to just sit down and make her a chart and let her know what she can do when. </p>

<p>varska- my kids haunt milesplit all the time looking at times and comparing themselves to their local competition, etc. I think I will just skip signing up for any of the other recruiting websites.</p>

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<p>My experience is with D3 and consistent with the points above. My daughter played soccer and ran track. It was a mystery (at least to me) as to how to approach soccer recruitment unless one had a kid who had participated in prominent showcase tournaments etc. My daughter never did any of that even though she was a very strong high school player. On the other hand, if you have track times/distances that are competitive in a particular league, then the conversation with a coach is pretty straightforward. I agree with Varska’s statement about the timeline for D3 as well. We started our process around the time of spring break of junior year and that seemed to match up well with the expectations of coaches, who were looking at outdoor junior seasons marks and fresh SAT and ACT scores.</p>

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<p>Spring of junior year sounds good to me. That gives us more time to get those times down!</p>

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<p>The spring of junior year is also a good time to visit schools and meet the coaches.</p>

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<p>I found the answer to what I was talking about earlier.</p>

<p>You as the student can contact the coaches any time but D1 and D2 coaches can’t reach out to you personally till junior year. Not sure why but D3 has no restrictions like this.</p>

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<p>3togo, thanks for the link! There seems to be a lot of good information including a timeline. D is a sprinter. Her favorite event is the 400m. She ran a 59:60 as an 8th grader and 1:00.43 early as a freshman, but then spent the rest of the season sidelined with a stress fracture. She ran the 800m for the first (and only) time last season while she had the fracture. She came in first with a time just over 2:20, but the electronic timing system malfunctioned so that was a hand time and not counted on milesplit. We ran into that problem a lot last year- 3 of the meets we competed in (including our home meet) had malfunctioning systems so the times were not put on milesplit. That was very frustrating for her.</p>

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<p>D3 schools do not offer athletic money, so less restrictions on the contact. D1 & DII schools cannot talk to your athlete until July 1 in the summer after junior year. </p>

<p>D1 & IL schools all seemed to send out tons of those generic questionnaires to all junior year athletes that made the national elite performance cutoff on the milesplit and athletic.net lists. We found filling out most of them to be a waste of time, we got forms from schools that weren’t even looking for an athlete in my S event. </p>

<p>Time was better spent contacting the coaches of the schools we were interested in via e-mail. You can usually find all of the contact info on the athletic staff directories in the team website. My S is now a D1 athlete and we did not utilize any recruiting site, just followed the excellent advice found here from people like Varska and others!</p>

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<p>The track recruiting quidelines that is mentioned above is just that a guildeline - what one D1 school is looking for is much faster than another.</p>

<p>My advice is to start trying to figure out what type of school she wants to go to - large rah rah, smaller type or somthing in between. Then start to look at the rosters of the runners on the current teams. You can learn a lot from that.</p>

<p>We have just finished with my S - he is going D1 in the fall to a smaller school - he is a solid runner but not one that i would say is a national elite runner by any means. We started early as well, saw his first school as a sophomore in the spring season. Just gave him a starting point - what he likes doesn’t like. Also if she runs 3 seasons there are not a lot of open weekends to go visit</p>

<p>Be realistic with her expectations</p>

<p>That is one of the best things about being recruited in this sport - its all about the times - either you have them and the coach is interested or you do not.</p>

<p>No harm in filling out the athletic questionaire’s on the web site.</p>

<p>And yes soccer signs NLI earlier than T&F/XC he signs his on Feb 5th</p>

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<p>This was forum I had started a few months back</p>

<p>My S has “verbally” committed to run D1 and I thought i would share my experiences as to how it came about as so it might help someone:</p>

<p>First a little about him and his times - leading up to this fall (his senior year): </p>

<p>5k - 17:19 (XC) (it is now 16:08)
3,200 - 9:29
1,600 - 4:26
800 - 1:56.8</p>

<p>Grades / test scores; 93.5 weighted avg with a 1060 SAT (crappy test taker) the usually AP and IB classes and college classes.</p>

<p>We started the process before the fall of his JUNIOR year, knowing that he was not a top Tier 1 type of recruit but possibly lower Tier 1/Tier 2 recruit.</p>

<p>Research the schools that you are looking at; understand the program and what they are trying to accomplish. Find out if they offer athletic scholarships for running, you would be surprised at how many do not. Figure out where do I fit in on this team. Did they just sign 4 great freshman and you will never get to compete? Figure out is it important to be the top dog on a team or do you just want to compete/work out and hopefully help the team as a Junior/Senior.</p>

<p>Taking OV’s is difficult with the timing - XC season can run into late November and then the school’s do not want you after thanksgiving due to Finals. by the time the schools return in session you are about to start running the important Indoor Track events. I recommend taking the OV’s in early September. This will give you a feel for the school and also keep you mentally fresh for your team. Do not want to be running Counties on Saturday thinking about how you are going to XYZ U on Sunday for an overnight</p>

<p>You have to decide also is running going to help me get into a school that i might normally not have gotten into or am i looking to maximize my potential scholarship $$$?</p>

<p>Email the coaches with updates and when sending in your times to them, provide a link so they can easily verify. Fill out the athletic questionnaire on the web site - it helps get you in the coaches data base.</p>

<p>Visit the school if you can - contact the coach and let them know you are going to be there and if you could stop by and introduce yourself.</p>

<p>Understand the climate that you are looking at - if you are from a warm weather state going U of Vermont might not be a great fit…it gets cold running in 20 degree weather. Think also about altitude, running in the mountains can be beautiful but at 4,000 feet oxygen is at a premium.</p>

<p>The school he ended up verbally committing to was probably the most difficult school that was in his final 6, without being crazy academically. </p>

<p>Remember T&F scholarships are RENEWABLE yearly, so if they are offering you 25% this year and you fall way down the pecking order… So when picking a school reminder to pick one that you want to go to study at as well.</p>

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<p>Thank you! Lots of information to consider. I’ve told my daughter that I would really like her to make her ultimate decision based on academics. I would prefer that she go somewhere on an academic scholarship if possible. My son also runs track, but has no desire to run in college. He is going to Alabama on a full academic scholarship plus some extra funds. Some other kids in my son’s high school have financial packages pieced together from academics and athletics. I have also heard stories from parents whose kids went in as athletes and decided after freshman year, that it really wasn’t for them. With that in mind, D will need to pick a school that is financially doable for us if she decides later not to run track.</p>

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<p>Wise. Also, bear in mind that track scholarships tend not to be the big pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow. NCAA allows 18 scholarships for women to cover XC and Track. That’s for a fully-funded program, freshmen through seniors. With rosters of 50-60, that means lots of partials.</p>

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<p>It’s never too early, you can email coaches now, but im pretty sure they can’t email back until her junior year. Also i use berecruited and it works pretty well and you dont have to buy the package if you dont want to. Junior year is the most important in recruiting.Goodluck</p>

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<p>With my S & D, we waited until we could be memorable before we contacted coaches. Either a great performance at an event, a mark that would get their attention, or some other milestone. For them, it was Junior year. Coaches get bombarded with email from prospects, and you need a way to stand out from the crowd or you will get lost. Recommendations when you are ready to contact:</p>

<ol>
<li> Create a full resume with a picture. This will give them something different.</li>
<li> Pick up the phone. In this day and age, it has become so easy just to send an email. Be different.</li>
<li> Send a letter. Get noticed by sending them something real they can hold and review. Include a picture and your resume.</li>
</ol>

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<p>As a Soph I would advise focusing on training and getting her times as low as possible during the Spring season. Then find a team to run with this Summer who will be traveling to one or both of the big national events - AAU or USATF and have times good enough to allow you to run there. Lots of college coaches attend these events to identify recruits. </p>

<p>After you have the times that will catch their attention the advice given by Recruiticus above is excellent. College recruiting for T&F is fairly straight forward for coaches - the times don’t lie. We had several coaches tell us they don’t know how T&F coaches recruited before the internet and databases like Dyestat and Milesplit.</p>