Have a rower that connected with coach and planning to meet up on unofficial visit to see facilities, tour etc. Do parents go too? Or let athlete go alone with coach. And if parent does go meet coach, any advice/tips? Questions to ask, topics to avoid etc.
I have a recruited D1 rower - she had 5 unofficial visits right before covid shut everything down. Only 1 coach asked about a parent. She told him I was at a nearby coffee shop and she could call me to come, if he would like me there.
He said something along the lines of a thank you and that he prefers to just get to know the athlete at these meetings and often forgets to tell kids not to bring their parents.
We had a general admissions presentation and school tour planned later in the day - she handled all coach and team meet ups throughout the process and committed to an Ivy program prior to the ED application deadline.
Your child can ask in her follow up
email when she confirms her meetings or indicate she will have her parent present and see what each coach says too.
This is step 1 in a long process and plenty of time for questions if your daughter and the coach continue to move beyond the unofficial visit.
Good luck !
I agree with asking the coaches what they prefer. If they’ve already spent a lot of time on the phone with the athlete they might like the chance to pitch the program to parents. Or they might prefer a one on one. If invited, I’d just be ready with a few questions to get a feel for the program and clarity on the admissions process and timeline. Questions about how the sport is balanced with the academic demands of the school, what if a lab interferes with practice, day-in-the-life type questions, etc, are all fair game. Most coaches are pretty good at leading these discussions and will cover most of the things you want to know.
I don’t know if the world will be back to official visits this fall, but for those I would go in with the assumption that parents are not part of the visit.
Agree that it is a good idea to ask the coach. Personally I went on unofficials and not on officials.
But I did somewhat follow the rule of “speak when spoken to.” The coaches always had a couple questions for me, but primarily they want to hear the athlete. If you are a proud parent, it can be REALLY hard to let them toot their own horn and not chime in and give a more flattering version of the story.
I did have a couple questions that I asked that my son didn’t want to but wanted me to ask. I also did occasionally prompt him to tell more of the story but for the most part I was an observer to the conversation.
The coach wants to know if you are ok with the school, ok with the finances if that is an issue, supportive of your kid playing sports and getting good grades, and most importantly won’t be a PITA. The first 2 are asked, the second 2 are shown by your behavior.
2 Likes