Hi! You all seem so knowledgable - I figured you would be a good people to ask! My daughter is finishing up her Junior year. She has had contact with some coaches - no offers or anything like that! She wanted to see if she would be able to meet with coaches unofficially when we visit schools this summer. I know that coaches are wrapped up with NCAAs for the next couple of weeks. Is there a time when coaches typically take a vacation? She is running some meets in June and we wanted to see a few schools right after - before she gets into a work routine and we go on vacation.
Thank you so much for your time!
Has she been invited to attend any clinics?
Those can be a good place to start. Ask her coach for information if she’s not getting invited directly. Usually the invites come by email, sometimes phone call.
She can also register with NCAA and send out prospective athlete forms from the websites of the colleges you plan to visit to the coaches. If they are interested, they will reach out and offer to meet during your visit.
She hasn’t been invited to any clinics.(I didn’t even know about clinic!) She has had calls and has met a few coaches in person. She did register with the NCAA and is filling out forms and sending emails. I’m just wondering if coaches typically go on vacation right after NCAAs. I imagine that they would be ready for a break, but I know that they recruit too!
Varies quite a bit but I’d say the few weeks after NCAAs a huge portion of coaches are recovering or on vacation. Some are getting ready for USATF Outdoors if they have athletes qualified.
I’d check in individually with the coaches to see when good times are. Usually they can have an assistant cover if they aren’t there during July or August. Distance coaches are usually back for XC by mid August.
I wouldn’t worry about clinics for distance kids. Some programs have them but they aren’t necessary for recruiting.
4 Likes
There was a flurry of recruitment related activity right before this time (official visits, clinics, calls, etc.). I do think this is a time when coaches are less focused on recruiting for whatever reason. It sounds like your D has a good plan from what you describe.
I had a kid that was recruited T&F. We visited colleges when it worked with our schedule for college visits which was helpful for narrowing the focus. For early visits we often did not know at that that time that they were on the radar for school/coach. We would reach out and let a coach know that we were interested and would be on campus on x day for a tour, visit, etc.
We found the coaches were typically good at responding and if they could accommodate us they would. A few cases there was something like unfortunately I will not be on campus that day but I will reach out to coach y and let him know and he can give you a tour of athletics, T&F, etc.
2 Likes
I would just reach out to any coaches where she is interested. Wrestling is my son’s sport, but our spring break was the week after the D1 national tournament. A coach recruiting him pretty hard was fine with us doing a visit that next Tuesday. He said the practice room would pretty empty, but he would still be there and would get some guys together for S to meet.
I think that there may be some on vacation, however, college coaching is also a 365 day a year job. I’m guessing quite a few of these coaches are still taking and making calls from the beach, and even if they are on their “do nothing” time at home will come in to show a prospect around. My experience was that even at the lower levels there was quite a bit of that behavior (which is why I know several former coaches that decided for D3 or NAIA money they weren’t willing to keep working a 24/7/52 job).
Bottom line: Just reach out. If they are gone, they are gone. But if not physically out of town and they are interested in your daughter they will probably rearrange their schedule to accomodate you.
1 Like
You should definitely reach out and see if the coach is available. I thought unofficials were a great way to meet the coach and learn about schools. Email the coach with your plans. If you don’t get a response, call and say when you will be visiting campus. See if a coach is around and can accommodate you. You may also want to let them know what meets you are attending as – you never know – they just may show up. Be prepared for meeting with the coach. Take your unofficial transcript and college CV with you. Also have your kid practice a 2 minute elevator speech about themselves and prepare 3 questions in advance.
One more thing. Some colleges value interest. Make sure to stop by the admissions office, even if the office is closed. Fill out the card that puts you on the mailing list. This often is used by AOs as evincing applicant interest, as many applicants never step foot on campus these days.
1 Like
Thank you, everyone! Hopefully we will get lucky and have some coaches in town when we visit schools. I like the idea of having a transcript with her should she get to meet a coach. We plan on doing tours through admissions, exploring the town and hopefully meet a coach if we can get lucky.
When it comes to official visits… how do they typically work? I know top recruits get invites, but what about kids who aren’t top recruits but still meet some of the recruit times? How many invites do coaches typically give each year? I apologize in advance for the dumb questions!
Someone with recent track experience can better answer your specific question, but I just wanted to remind you that you aren’t asking dumb questions!
Many of the “experts” on here, including me at least in my particular area, were on here a few years ago asking “dumb” questions. After lots of advice and help, as well as our own experiences, we are now able to give back to the community. But not that long ago most of us were in your position. So don’t be embarrassed to ask away!
4 Likes
Like others have said, even if the coach is not available this summer it still makes sense to visit and officially tour the school (if feasible for you). If you child still likes/loves the school after spending time with admissions and a tour, it is a great reason for a follow up email to the coach to let them know about the visit and keep in touch.
My daughter was recruited for a different sport and her #1 school and where she ended up no longer met for any unofficial visits. She unofficially visited 7 other programs the late winter of her junior year right before everything shut down due to Covid (plus had a few officials - all over Zoom due to Covid the next Fall - an entirely different process).
All unofficial visits she met with the coach and team plus toured. At the one that no longer did unofficial visits, she toured the school and snuck a peek at the facility for her sport. and it still remained her #1 choice. She let the coach know and he was well aware she had visited a bunch of schools and by mid-summer had passed pre-reads for all.
For the unofficial visits, she had already supplied the coach with test score, high school profile and transcript that covered through 1st semester junior year prior to the coach agreeing to an unofficial.
Long after the fact, we had conversations with the coach and while he really wants kids that have the talent - He also wants kids that want to be at the school and see it as the right fit too.
It can be a long ride with bumps along the way - so hold on 
4 Likes
For official visits at D1 schools, typically the coach will bring it up at some point in the process, then nail down a date and eventually get the travel plans made. Pretty common to bring in a group of recruits on the same weekend.
The school usually pays for travel and the recruits stay with current athletes. There are ncaa limits on how long recruits can be on campus, I think 48 hours. The coaches will handle this.
So a typical program might bring in several groups of distance kids over several weekends in the fall, for example. Then there might be some recruits coming individually at various times throughout the fall and winter.
In terms of how coaches handle this and how many invites they extend, it varies a lot. Generally they’re narrowing the recruiting pool quite a bit, inviting a larger group than they think they’ll get, then making some decisions based on those visits. But they aren’t inviting hundreds of recruits; could be in the single digits at some programs to a few dozen at others.
There are some coaches who are pretty confident in their yield rate and keep visits pretty limited. Others bring in a lot either because they need to or because they like a lot of options.
Getting invited to an OV is a pretty big step. They use program resources and coaches don’t waste them. But it is not necessarily a guarantee of scholarship money or admissions support.
If this doesn’t come up in the course of discussions, I think it’s fine at some point to ask the coach if they bring people for OVs, how it works, when they decide who to invite. Just a simple question like, “might there be a chance to visit campus and the team when school is in session” is probably enough to get the ball rolling.
Some programs don’t have the budget or bandwidth to do many OVs so it’s possible some schools you look at might have a different process.
2 Likes
Not all XCTF programs will have much of a budget for official visits. If not, you may be offered an unofficial visit that is very similar to an official one in length and experience, but you would be paying for the travel. Typically one of the days would be during the week so you child can go to class with one of the current team members. Sunday/Monday schedule was pretty common in our experience. There are often multiple recruits on visits at the same time.
As you might imagine, the fall will be very hectic with these visits plus fall xc schedule plus college applications plus regular schoolwork and extra curriculars. By the end of summer, we had seen enough schools on summer visits to really narrow down which schools to go focus on in the fall. Good luck!
2 Likes
Good luck. When my son was planning unofficial visits to schools for XC/Track we found that coaches tended to be slow to respond with confirmation, but nearly every one sent an email a day or two before we left for the school–after we made the decision to visit the school whether we saw the coach or not. I think that might have been a way to sort out student athletes who were really interested in the school. I think you have the right attitude on the unofficial visits.
Coaches will have drastically different attitudes and strategies on official visits. Some teams invite 5 or 6 recruits for every spot, and some are much closer to 1 to 1. I know at least one school that has stuck to OVs in the fall of senior year, and at least one that has started hosting OVs in junior year. It’s probably easiest to ask about an OV in the context of an overall discussion with the coach on their recruiting process and timeline.
1 Like
I second that clinics aren’t a big deal for XC recruiting. There are a fair number of coaches that host cross country camps for high school students. My son went to two different ones over three years. He had good experiences, but neither was billed as a recruiting tool for the coaches or as something that would give a recruit a leg up.
1 Like
Thank you! I really appreciate your message. I am happy to have found this site. The college search is daunting enough without the recruiting factor! I am going to be happy to share what I learn with others as well!
1 Like
This is incredibly helpful! We have visited several schools this past year and are going to continue to do tours this summer. I just want her to find a good fit and I believe that there is more than one good fit for a school! I am sure she would love the experience of an official visit and if it happens that would be great. I love your advice on how to ask about how they are done at a given school. It’s funny - this process is awkward and nervewracking, but I also think that it is a great experience for her in general. She will learn things that she will use later in life… the whole search, writing emails, being persistant, follow ups, asking awkward questions, calls with coaches and I am sure there will be rejection. But that’s ok - she will grow as a person through this experience and will be better for it all in the end! Thank you for your guidance and support. I am getting a better idea of how to help her though it all!
1 Like
I’m also aware of schools in another sport (women’s lacrosse) that wait to do official visits until senior year when they have the entire committed recruiting class set and can bring them all on campus together at the same time.
1 Like