@SCdreamin You are on the right path. Due to high school, AAU, camps, etc… commitments year-round my daughter overplayed 8th grade, freshman and sophomore years. She said, “Yes” to everything. She developed nagging injuries like shin splints and frankly, burned out a bit mentally during her junior year. You want her at peak performance her senior year for the D1 scholarship or LAC acceptance, so it is better to have a bit of downtime early on. It is a marathon, not a sprint.
Listen very closely to what high academic D3 coaches are telling you. Unlike D1 where coaches have a set number of scholarships and academics don’t really enter the scholarship equation very much, some D3 coaches overrecruit. It is almost as if they try for more than they need and see who shows up on campus as freshmen, because they have little say with admissions and who enrolls. Others do not overrecruit.