My kid applied to a good handful of the ‘alphabet soup’ schools.
Kid participated in 2 sports at a potential varsity level as a freshman and reached out to head coach of both sports at each school prior to applying. Kid then zoomed with all those coaches (minus one who was too busy or didn’t see kid as a value add to the team) plus also zoomed with some kids on each team. That entire fall was a zoom-fest.
We didn’t have any surprise calls from coaches for recruiting because my kid had already initiated the contact. However, at one of the schools, during a rare in-person tour and face to face meeting with a coach, a head coach of a completely different (and brand new) sport spotted kid and introduced themselves and then reached out on a regular basis (in fact, was the first person from that school to congratulate kid on M10).