Gauging Interest from Coaches

gointhruaphase
Sat, 13 Mar 2021 18:39:55 +0000

College recruiting is a very stressful process, and you will feel that stress (probably at increasing levels) until the bitter end. For me, I was concerned about whether mine were good enough, were they too good, were they prepared enough for a good academic institution, was I projecting, was I doing enough, was I doing too much. None of those thoughts left until the acceptance letter was received.

The good thing that you are doing is starting relatively early. There is an argument that it just prolongs the stress, but the stress might be far worse if you started later. There is nothing worse than a coach saying that he or she would have been really interested in your kid, but he or she just recruited at that position and no longer has a need.

As for the rest, you definitely should cast a wide net to the greatest number of schools possible. The reason being that you never know when you’ll get traction. You never know what school needs what your kid has to offer. As a non-athlete, you can get a pretty good idea about where you stand on admission through test score and class rank percentiles. The only way an athlete can figure it out where he or she fits in is by reaching out to coaches.

The fact that coaches are responding is positive, but don’t assume that all coaches don’t respond if they aren’t interested. Some certainly pull a ghost, but some don’t. The real question is what are the coaches saying, and it sounds like the coaches are sending encouraging signs to yours.

If your kid plays in the spring, I would keep reaching out with updates (e.g., test score, athletic award, new video, all league award, etc.) at a rate of about once a month. Spreading the communications out signifies your continued interest and gives you the opportunity to gauge the strength of the coaches’ interest.