Both when on the calendar, and when in the process? If a coach offers you an official visit, can you delay accepting or rejecting their offer until after the visit?
For most D1 sports, OVs can start August 1 before junior year (this is one way athletes can be verbally committed well before senior year). Obviously OVs werenāt happening for much of the pandemic because there was a D1 dead period until June 1, 2021.
Regarding timing, most coaches will give at least a couple days to accept an offer, but it really varies. Generally you arenāt going to get a month to decide. If you have other OVs to go to (you get a max of 5 in D1) and timing is an issue, you need to tell the coach, generally best not to keep information from them. Not all coaches offer OVs, especially in D3.
The sports (and division) specific recruiting timelines are all on the NCAA website, as well as a Guide for the College bound Student Athlete. You should carefully read all of that info, as well as the Ivy conference recruiting info that someone linked to yesterday on another one of your threads.
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Good info above. Iāll just add a few thoughts.
This is one of those things that varies a lot by coach and sport. So Iād caution against generalizing from what happens in other sports to what should happen in your sport.
Past recruiting experiences are going to have limited predictive value for the next few years I think. It was only a few years ago (seems like it was ā18 ?) that the OV rules were changed to allow visits in junior year. Some coaches changed their timelines, others didnāt, others were starting to adapt. Then COVID came along and scrambled everything. So itās really hard to know what kind of ānormalā weāll return to, and when that will start. Iāve talked to two different track coaches over the last few weeks who still didnāt know if theyād be allowed by their schools to host recruits this fall.
Since your other threads indicate Ivy interest, hereās how things have gone for the Ivy track recruits I know (all of this is pre-COVID): conversations with coaches in the spring of junior year that included clear descriptions of the recruiting process; pre-reads in July; invitations to official visits extended after pre-reads, with dates and flights usually ironed out by the end of the summer. Some of those recruits were told over the summer that theyād get coach support if they wanted it, others were told that those decisions would be made following the OV. In all cases it was assumed that the recruits would complete all their OVs before committing to a program, assuming that this could be done by early to mid Oct. None of the coaches pressed for an earlier decision (several of these kids were visiting P5 programs and received no pressure to decide quickly there either). However, once visits were done and it was well into Oct, the coaches were pretty clear about needing a decision by x date so they could move on. In a couple cases the coaches were willing to wait until winter for a decision, but I wouldnāt say thatās typical. And again, this is for track, not necessarily other sports. Track is kind of at what I would call the more relaxed/sane end of the recruiting spectrum.
Anyway, Iād go with what the coaches are telling you and donāt get too worried if things are moving along a different timeline in other sports.
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