Dlll coach has not returned this year to one of the schools on D’s list. What happens to recruiting? School is not her first or second choice but could be a solid alternative. She had not yet spoken to the coach. How much does that disrupt the process? Does the assistant coach tread water until there is a new head coach?
This school is not in NESCAC.
The asst coaches do try to keep anyone who was committed (but not signed or admitted), but some do drift away. It is not the current class that is the issue but the next class. If the new coach comes in in the fall, many students have already picked their ED school, or in the case of D1 and D2 schools, are getting ready to sign the NLI. Some may take the ‘sure thing’ rather than wait on the new coach.
On the other hand, some kids may follow the coach to the new school.
My daughter played for the same coach for 4 years but her favorite asst coach left and that was hard. Her head coach left this summer and they just announced a new (very young) coach who started Sept 1. The new coach inherits 7 or 8 recruited freshmen for this playing year, but is behind on recruits to sign this fall (for 2019-20). The new coach was an asst at another D2 school but the schools are entirely different so unlikely any recruits from that school will follow her; the old head coach went to a D1 school so unlikely any recruits will follow her. What is more likely to happen is some '19s, especially instate ones, will go to other schools in the conference. Boo.
Part of it will depend upon the timing of the appointment of the new head coach. In the interim, recruiting will go on. But as @twoinanddone correctly points out, some recruits will follow the coach to the new school. On the flip side, the new coach is likely to bring some recruits with him/her.
Stay on top of things. The summer between junior and senior year the recruiting coach at one of the schools my S was interested in left. The coach had asked my S to send periodic updates (he’s a runner which tends to be a later recruiting sport). He sent updates after every season and the coach always responded. When he sent an early summer update there was no response. He sent a few more updates over the summer, still no response. We got suspicious and investigated. Ends up the coach had left but my S was never notified; emails didn’t bounce; we had no idea what was going on. Eventually we sent an update to a different coach on the team who forwarded it to the correct person. S would have been a walk-on at that school, not a top level recruit, but it still would have been nice for them to notify him. The new coach was not interested in engaging with him, so we moved on.
Fast forward–S is a freshman at a different (D3) school. We dropped him on Saturday morning; Saturday afternoon at the first team meeting they learned the assistant coach who recruited him was leaving and would not be accompanying them to running camp on Monday. Just like that, he was gone. S was disappointed and the team managed for a few weeks without an assistant coach, with practices mostly run by captains and supervised by the head coach. A new coach started about 2 weeks into school and S seems happy, so it’s all good. It happens.
A player would need the athletic and academic qualifications to match to the new school. If a coach made a big move that seems unlikely. Would a Dlll recruit looking at LACs change divisions to follow a coach to Dll or Dl if they could?
@blue1516 Agreed, depending on coach move the school may not be a fit anymore. Lots of coaches make moves across a wide spectrum of athletic and/or academic levels. Coaches are definitely not limited to school types and/or conferences they have experience in. For students looking at DIII LACs, I could see some students follow a coach to certain DI conferences, such as Patriot League, maybe some schools in CAA. Depends on the sport for sure too.
Yes, some athletes could be happy at a school in a different division. The athletics might not be all that different. My daughter was recruited in all 3 divisions and seriously considered schools in all 3 divisions.
A friend did follow the coach from a D3 school in Ohio to a D1 in North Carolina.
@blue1516 I know of a couple of NESCAC recruits who followed the coach when she moved to the PAC-12, which surprised me. My kids’ teams have gone through a number of assistant coach changes, but the head coaches have remained the same.
Unfortunately there is a fair amount of turnover in the coaching positions, especially among younger coaches who seem to on the lookout for better opportunities (asst to head position, more competitive better funded program, D3 to D1, rural to urban or vice versa setting). This late into the recruiting season, for D3’s, the new coaches tend to honor the commitments of the prior coach for seniors, but this is definitely a case by case matter. I think it tends to be open season as far as juniors are concerned. I’d definitely reach out to the asst coach to see what is going on.