Time management! If the niece finds it challenging to wolf down dinner, hack away at the homework, find time to shower while living with Mom and Dad who do the laundry, the driving, maintain the calendar-- she’ll start to see how incredibly efficient a college athlete needs to be with ZERO flex in the schedule.
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One of my D’s teammates a class behind her was an A student and also recruited as a D1 player. She was throwing mid 60’s. Her dream was to pitch for the Olympics. She also wanted to be an MD. Their whole family moved to her college city. I had tried to convince her parents to look at my D’s college where they would have gotten probably more FA than they did athletic money. She would have dominated the NESCAC. Instead she was out after sophomore year, and she currently works in a vet office. Talking to her a few times, she seems happy, but I just think about the opportunities wasted.
Another approach to take with your sisters is, what is the end game? Professional softball is not realistic. Softball may be a means to get into a better school. There is no real college athletic money in unless you are NiJaree Canady. My D’s HS coach always told parents, if you are chasing money for college, spend your money on SAT or other tutors vs on fancy travel teams. This was a guy who won over 20 straight district championships.
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I would 100% stay out of it, except to recommend the CC Athletic Recruits forum, and to encourage the family to speak with the college coach.
You do not know how the next few years will play out!!
I do realize that many families overestimate their athlete’s potential. Now that I am all done, and with hindsight, my son actually did have the talent to go pro. I don’t know that he would change anything but if a few different decisions were made when he was your niece’s age, he would have been on a different track. I took to heart “no one is going pro” a little too much. So – it is likely you are right! But you never know. Focus on educating them about the process, leave out the talent critique.
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Totally agree! My D is at a NESCAC and was a top recruit. She had D1 offers that did not meet her academic standards, so she tried to find the highest intersect of athletics and academics, and (no surprise) that was the NESCAC. All along she knew she’d only go D1 if it was the right fit, otherwise she’d go high D3. She had two club teammates who went lower D1, saw limited playing time, their respective teams lost almost every game and the academics were weak. They both transferred after freshman year.
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Deleting, not really comfortable anymore
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There are some fairly objective criteria in softball/baseball recruiting, especially as it relates to pitching. OP’s niece may be a freshmen, but girls develop more quickly than boys where they can be late bloomers into senior year. As a freshmen, is she throwing at least mid fifties? Has she already hit her growth spurt or is there more growth expected (very important to pitchers because of increased leverage).
Of course we should let kids “dream”, but if you are making major decisions based on unrealistic expectations(like going to a private school), a reality check is advisable. Maybe OP’s niece has got the talent, not judging that, but the usual family/friends sources are inaccurate unless they have first hand (not heard it from a friend) knowledge.
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My biggest regret was taking D26 on campus visits summer between sophomore and junior year before she had any meaningful convos with coaches at those programs. She fell in love with a high reach school and that bias played a huge role in her willingness to cast a wider net. It took a lot of soul searching before she was able to look at recruitment with a more realistic lens.
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I think there is always some compromise for an athlete. My daughter might have gotten into UF with her grades (it’s always an issue in Florida and can depend on how many other kids from a certain hs apply, but even if she’d gotten in, and even if a coach had said she could be a walk on, she NEVER would have gotten playing time. Playing time was important to her, so she picked another type of school that had the academics she wanted and she played almost every minute of every game for 4 years.
What did she give up? Name recognition of the school. Well, name recognition to the general public. Plenty of engineering employers know the school, and in the end that’s what’s important.
(edited per OctoberKate’s request)
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I hope this is taken in the spirit it is intended, as I feel uncomfortable reading this thread about a relative. A lot of information about this young student has been shared and if she ever came upon this thread, it would be so hard. I think posting about someone else’s child is risky even if we know the intentions are good and to support her and her family unless they have granted permission.
Maybe taking this to private message with the posters that have experience in this sport would be better - or maybe I am overstepping or just overly sensitive to privacy.
Our daughter was a recruit and I did everything to keep her identity private - but still received messages from a couple CCers that had figured it who she was and where she was participating in her sport - including someone (a stranger) reaching out to directly after finding her on the school roster to talk about their daughter who they were hoping to be recruited.
I remain incredibly grateful for the knowledge I gained on CC, but it was upsetting to my child at the time. It can be is a small world.
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Yes, I think this is a reasonable concern. Perhaps editing some of the posts to obscure identifying info would help also.
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@politeperson and @coffeeat3 yes - I agree. I’m now not thrilled with myself. As you maybe noticed, I deleted my original post that had more info, but unfortunately people had already quoted from it, and I can’t delete from there. I’m not sure what else to do?
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Maybe the mods can help ?
I am just uber sensitive after the reach outs from strangers and how upset my daughter was with me for even mentioning anything on CC - even though CC helped me a lot … it is not all about me 
I have never identified her college, race results or high school, but that didn’t make her feel any better and she was right that she was still identifiable.
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Deleted quote from my comment.
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Thank you!