Given the April 2018 ncaa rule changes, when do high school baseball players do their camps and showcases? The coaches can’t talk to you about recruiting until after september 1 of junior year, but presumably you’ve put yourself into their line of sight before then. So is sophomore year a good time to start contacting coaches via email and to sign up for post-sophomore-summer camps so that coaches can reach out after September 1? Or does baseball have an earlier timeline, even with the new restrictions?
This is so complicated if coaches can’t reply to email or talk to you during unofficial visits.
Here is a site with a good summary:
Camps and clinics: Recruits and college coaches are not allowed to have any recruiting conversations during camps prior to September 1 of the athlete’s junior year of high school. Previously, there weren’t really any rules that prevented coaches from talking about recruiting to underclassmen during camps. In fact, it had become common practice for college coaches to extend verbal scholarship offers to top recruits during camps. https://www.ncsasports.org/ncaa-eligibility-center/recruiting-rules Note, this does not apply to D3 coaches:
When can Division III coaches contact athletes?
DIII schools have the most relaxed NCAA recruiting rules of all the division levels. Similar to NCAA DII, they are the same for all sports:
… Off-campus contact: After the athlete’s sophomore year, college coaches may begin to conduct off-campus communications.
Official visits: Athletes can begin taking official visits after January 1 of their junior year.
Unofficial visits: Athletes can make an unlimited number of unofficial visits at any time.
It will be interesting to see how camps handle the new rules on recruiting contact. S attended the Headfirst and Stanford camps summer between junior and senior years. The kids (rising juniors and seniors) were all put together and there was open access to all the coaches. It will be interesting to see what the camps will do, separate sessions, or identifying t-shirt/uniforms. Might be worth a call to Headfirst or another one of these camps. The Headfirst people have always been pretty helpful in our experience.
In any event, it is not too early to send emails, put together video, fill in recruiting questionnaires if your kid is a sophomore.
Multiple freshmen and sophomores from S’s baseball club verbally committed to D1 programs in the last several months. Some at school camps, some at showcases, some via phone calls with coaches. New rules do state coaches aren’t supposed to be offering slots before junior year but continues to happen, across many sports.
Kids can still call coaches at anytime (at any age, there may be some limits on this for certain sports, but not baseball), the rub is that the coach has to pick up the phone. These phone calls are coordinated by club/HS coaches and/or third party recruiting consultants (NSCA et al).
Definitely fill out recruiting questionnaires now. Emails are ok to send as well, but coaches can’t answer until junior year, but they can contact your coach. I would also suggest the student/player set up a Twitter account—pin a highlight video at the top, follow coaches and programs that he is interested in, retweet appropriate baseball tweets. Only baseball content on this account, nothing else, nothing controversial.
@BKSquared I appreciate your help and the specifics! I will definitely pass the word to my friend about Headfirst. It’s interesting that it was not too late for your son to be attending camps between junior and senior year. That is currently my friend’s plan, and I was thinking this is much too late? They didn’t want to invest in camps until their son felt he was in top form, so they wanted to wait. But he is already well over six feet, and how will he even know how competitive he is in terms of skills unless he goes beyond his local team? That’s why this unofficial visit restriction is so inconvenient. As it stands, it’s going to be hard for him to even speak to anyone outside of his local coach (who I think isn’t too helpful).
@Mwfan1921 yes, I suspected that verbal commitments were happening anyway, regardless of the change. I am wondering whether maybe my friend should hire a recruiting consultant. My kids are swimmers/rowers and we’ve never had the need…but that’s because swimming is a timed sport and rowing is a tight network with a database of regatta results. We also used BeRecruited. It sounds much more aggressive and complicated in baseball, I am assuming because there is often money involved (a lot less money for swimming/rowing, at least for boys). Does anyone have any idea of how much those recruiting services cost? Thanks so much again!
Much depends on the player’s baseball goals and talent level–is it to get into a more selective college (generally lower baseball skill level)? Play at the highest level possible? Earn scholarship $? (Although there are 11.7 baseball scholarships per team at the D1 level, those are typically apportioned across many players. Not many players receive full tuition, let alone full rides.)
I haven’t used a sports recruiting service, but know people who have. Some people are happy with these services, some not, and everything in between. Companies like NCSA and NSR have different levels of packages, general range around $2.5K - $5K.
Another option could be to have the player tryout for a club team, the type that travel to summer tournaments which college coaches (and professional scouts) frequent. Obviously that is only an option if there is a club team in the player’s area, and the player can make the team. Cost associated with those teams ranges, but count on a couple of grand in fees plus travel (another couple of grand, easy). Club coaches are usually well versed in supporting team members re: playing baseball beyond college and many have established relationships with colleges coaches.
@LivesinHobbiton Headfirst between Junior and Senior year is great for a player who is looking at a High Academic D3, assuming that he has talent and the grades. If you are looking at HA D1’s, you might want to make sure and attend early in the summer, and even better, get the coach/RC to watch/be aware of the player during the fall season/travel ball of his junior year. In my experience, D1’s are always looking for pitching, but position players better get a spot nailed down as early as possible.
S1 left things kind of late(Mid August rising Senior), but got multiple offers from D3’s. He did have good marks, and some baseball measurables that made him stand out, though. I suspect that he could’ve gotten a mid major D1 spot if he really wanted it, but going the D3 route allowed him to a better choice of top academic schools.
FWIW, my nephew is playing JUCO baseball right now. He is at a JUCO because he (and his father) were focused on a top ten or fifteen program, and they passed on a lot of opportunities in his junior and senior year at schools that are maybe a notch below the true elite in the sport. But still, he was getting serious recruiting interest (and a couple real nice offers) from Big 12/ACC/PAC 12 schools throughout his senior year of high school.
One thing to remember about baseball, at least at the upper levels, is there is a lot of unexpected roster turnover. You don’t actually declare for the MLB draft like in football or (I think) basketball. So a redshirt junior at LSU all of a sudden has a phenomenal spring, gets drafted much higher than expected, and decides to take his shot. Same thing happens to kids coming out of high school or junior college. All these things open up holes in rosters over the summer, which means that recruiting needs change in the next cycle, etc., etc. This system, along with the large number of players drafted by MLB, tends to keep a lot of recruiting rosters kind of fluid. I think this complicates the time line in that sport somewhat. Whether that really applies to the Ivy/NESCAC world of most interest here, I really don’t know.
I miss-wrote my post #1. “Between” should have been “before” (S attended Headfirst and Stanford camps between both soph and junior year and junior and senior year). However, I should add that S did not get official OV’s or serious interest until after the camp between junior and senior years. With some boys maturing later, especially if they are young for their class, I think baseball coaches wait later in the cycle to completely fill out their recruit rosters. Having said that, the camps (Headfirst and Stanford) between sophomore and junior year did get S on the radar screen of a number of coaches with whom he had email dialogues through junior year. This helped him out because we live in flyover land and his travel team played predominantly in tournaments in the Southwest and Mountain States while his focus was academic schools on the 2 coasts.
S’s friends and teammates shooting for top D1 programs with hopes of a professional career often went the Juco route unless they felt that they could secure a starting position. Playing time paramount for them, with prospects of being drafted coming out of Juco.
Start as early as you can with your recruiting efforts. Most people regret not starting earlier, few think they should have started later.
On showcases, the issue to my mind is why are you going to any given showcase, what do you expect to get out of the showcase, what skills do you want to “show off” and, as @BKSquared notes above, how far along is the recruit in development. I will say that unless you have some off the chart measurable skills (e.g., speed, arm strength, pop times), it may be hard to stand out among 500 or so other recruits at top showcases when you get 5 at bats. I only say this for parents to think about the skills you plan to show off, which showcase will best show off those skills, and know the “showcase rules” for those skills (e.g., don’t run with a cap, spot the fastest other runner and try to run against him, etc). If your kid has speed, starting earlier at showcases is no big deal. If your kid is a consistent singles hitter, you may want to wait for maturity. Some of the rising senior pitchers at the big showcases can be fairly crafty against the younger hitters. Some camps just have BP, which, again, could be a consideration.
In any event, I always thought it was wise to start early with a few local showcases to give the recruit some experience with the drills and the cattle call. In all likelihood, you won’t get much in the line of college interest, but it gives the kid experience and helps a parent assess where the kid is.
Headfirst is not the cheapest camp out there, but if possible I would do as a rising junior and rising senior. It allows a recruit to show off skills that showcases other do not, like coachability. But, as noted, it is pretty important to start a dialogue with coaches before the camp. With NESCAC and D3 schools in particular, it isn’t necessarily an early offer that you are looking for, it is an early relationship that may help you down the line.
My son attended Headfirst on Long Island, along with a few other camps his rising senior summer. He targeted Ivy, NESCAC, and high academic D1 schools. The prior summer and during Christmas break, he went to a few college showcase camps where specific coaches saw him. Several weeks before the summer camps, he emailed coaches letting them know the camps he would be attending, along with a link to his recruiting video. So, by senior summer, most of the coaches had already watched him throw at least once.
I think it’s important to contact coaches with emails and updates before the camps so they have the player on a short list prior to the camp. I could see from Headfirst that it would be very easy for a coach to miss seeing a player - my son drew a slot at 8pm and very few coaches even stuck around to see the guys in that group, but those who wanted to see him stayed to watch.
On a side note, I really hated Headfirst - a total cattle call, and S was there for over 12 hours in 95 degree heat before anyone saw him throw.