Our team has one recruit at this point. In the past we have had 5-6 commits by now. (D3 sport)
Wondering if the late FAFSA, which seems to be delaying financial aid awards, has something to do with this.
With the end of Covid holdovers, we thought recruiting would bounce right back, but it hasn’t.
I don’t see why that would affect the recruiting process, except perhaps the athletes delaying announcing their commitments?
FYI, the Covid extra years are still in the pipeline through next year. In my sport I’m still seeing programs focus on filling next year’s recruiting class with fifth and sixth years.
I also don’t think FAFSA delay is impacting recruiting. In addition to another year of Covid impact, the changes in the transfer portal have really hurt HS recruiting in some sports like football and volleyball (and others).
Mine is a D3 athlete, and from the beginning we have told coaches she needed to have all her acceptances and financial packages before committing. She understands that may mean she doesn’t get to start freshman year, but I won’t let her commit until we know the costs. Yes, we’ve run the NPC at schools. She has the max automatic merit but is also waiting on scholarships (some are full tuition), Honors (has responses from most but not all), etc.
She has friends in other sports whose singular goal was to play their sport - they have committed. For mine, cost, honors, and other cohorts is important too.
Truly think it depends on school. My daughter is at a d3 school that uses css so it hasn’t seemed to have an impact. They actually have a bigger class then in the past few years due to fewer seniors taking the fifth year covid option
I think some students may not be able to commit to the school, but students have been committing to coaches on estimated FA for years. My daughter signed her letter of intent in Nov, but in those days FAFSA wasn’t filed until Jan 1 and not really processed until the parent’s tax returns were filed. Along came February and the merit aid from D’s school was different than expected (there was a mistake in her test scores). Panic all around but we got it fixed and continued on. We really didn’t know the entire FA picture until about mid-July when school started in Aug. She was prepared to take a gap year but it all fell into place.
I agree with @Mwfan1921 that there is a TON of shifting around because of the portal situation in most sports. The sophomore gymnast transfers to LSU and that leaves a spot at her school and maybe someone moves up and that leaves a spot for a new freshman or another transfer. Dominoes.