@bgbg4us The key word is MEET. Student athletes can CALL a coach at any time (the coach has to pick up and can not call back, at least until junior year, or timing per sport specific rules). College coaches can speak with club/high school team coaches any time as well.
Typically what happens is the college coach talks with the student’s coach and says have them “call me at x time on x day” and then a verbal offer is given. Another way a verbal commit happens is at a coach’s camp/clinic–that is not supposed to happen anymore per the new NCAA rules, but it is still a COMMON occurrence.
Verbal commits are easy for either party to break, and many are broken–student gets better offer, coach leaves to go to another school, kid can’t make the grade/test score, on and on. Things aren’t official until an LOI is signed senior year. There are no LOIs in D3.
The new NCAA rules haven’t changed things for most sports IMO…lots of early verbal commits still happening. Some sport governing bodies like women’s softball have made their rules more stringent than those of the NCAA, and that has changed the recruiting practices dramatically. The NCAA site has good info re: recruiting rules by sport.