@fenwaypark I see your point, though it’s very different from the perspective ingrained in me by 4 years as a BS parent (not to mention my own parents), where the importance of the handwritten thank you note was hammered into kids’ skulls. Of course, this was a school that was still requiring a handwritten application essay…so perhaps an anachronism in a twitterfied world.
Out of curiosity, what’s your take on coaches who write handwritten letters to recruits? Equally…ingratiating?
Sorry to have stated a storm of disagreement.
I used the word “crazy” half sarcastically as he is a 17 yr old teen and most that age think they know everything and look at parents as dinosaurs.
I said “err on the side of caution” because I was trying fenwaypark to take your advice and just let my son send an email. I’m not an expert on this by any means. My impression, thus far, with the two head coaches we met (on unofficial) and where my son has OV’s is that they are very relaxed and amiable. One even complimented us on our parenting. Yes I’m sure he was buttering us up but it was nice to hear as my kid is mature, respectful and fully committed to his sport.
I have let my son do ALL the communicating thus far with the exception of thanking, via email, all three head coaches we met with…
One spent a huge chunk of his weekend time to meet us and I felt it deserved recognition. He returned email with appreciation.
I too am curious what to make of hand written notes from asst. coach? It certainly got my attention as it takes time and effort…
Tonymom, my son just got back from an OV and also thought I was crazy when I mentioned thanking the coaches and the host for the visit. I persuaded him to send e-mails. I think handwritten notes are very nice but most of the coaches he has dealt with are young assistants (twenty-somethings) and I think they are much more likely to use e-mail.
Needscaffine,
It did occur to me if he wrote one it may end up on some desk cluttered by…well…I’ve seen what our HS coach’s desk looks like…:-0
Glad I’m not the only mom with this thought 
Yes, with the degree depending on the situation.
Handwritten note from coaches early in the recruitment process saying they have noticed the kid’s talent and are interested, tends to give a heightened impression of sincerity, and the handwritten praise can be expected to outweigh a youngster’s sensitivity to the ingratiation element of the medium.
Handwritten thank you letter from coaches around the time of an OV thanking the kid for sending a video update or something…probably high risk of coming off as ingratiating.
You can look at it this way: After the kid is on the team, how many handwritten notes do you expect between him/her and the coach? Such as,
Dear Coach, thank you so much for taking extra time with me after practice yesterday. Sincerely, Player
Or
Dear Player, thank you for carrying the water bottles out to the field yesterday. Sincerely, Coach
After the kid is on the team I anticipate there will be no handwritten notes between player and coaches. Why? Coaches don’t need to ingratiate at that point, all they need to do is be honest and fair. At the same time, the only way the player can get in the coach’s favor is (or should be) through performance and attitude.
Lots of things kids can do to show appreciation for an OV.
I think OP’s son was spot on to recognize the issue. I would trust his judgment on how to handle the situation in this case because he knows the coaches better than anyone else involved.
The best CC debates are always about the most trivial questions. You should see the laundry thread on the prep school board.
The point about the younger coaches and emails is well taken.
“After the kid is on the team I anticipate there will be no handwritten notes between player and coaches.”
Probably not, because the coach and player can talk FACE TO FACE. 
Too much overanalyzing for a simple thank you.
^^^^I don’t get it. They can talk by text and email now, yet some people seem to be recommending the handwritten note. But I am probably overanalyzing.
Dear goodness folks it’s just a #%%* thank you note for %%^* sake!!!
I suspect the Ivy coaches would have a good laugh at our discussions…
Life’s too short! Email it is!
I am hesitant to write, but, wow, some of this is surprising and silly to me. Both of my sons have been taught to write thank-yous for gifts since they knew how to write. As they’ve gotten older, they’ve written thank-you notes to people such as the writers of their college letters of recommendations, the awarder of a scholarship, the person/dept who interviewed them for a job and, most recently for ds2, the immediate supervisor at an internship. I just don’t think good manners are ever in poor form. If someone wants to think my kid is being ingratiating that’s on them.
ETA: Also, when one of them did an overnight visit I sent them with something fun for the host, usually something they couldn’t get at college, like Girl Scout cookies. You’d be amazed how happy a box of Thin Mints makes a kid!
Some more thoughts - Let’s leave totally out of the mix what a “good parent” should teach their kids. I agree that kids should be taught to write thank you notes for gifts and the like from an early age. Sadly, I personally often fell short in this respect (although my kids are now huge proponents of written thank you notes in the work world). But, this is a “recruiting” forum. Setting aside that “good manners” may counsel thanking a coach for his or her substantial effort to: 1) identify your child as a recruit; 2) set up the overnight and take the time to meet; 3) support your child through admissions, there are definite recruiting reasons to “thank” the coach. I start with the premise that a recruit should use every opportunity to communicate with the coach. Obviously, a thank you note or email for an OV is one such opportunity (my kids sent thank you emails for chatting at a showcase). The opposing argument is that by the time of OVs, the athlete pretty much knows that he or she is on the coach’s radar and there is no need to continue with another “touch.” It is only one person’s opinion, but I disagree. As a recruiting matter, the key to convey here is desire (e.g., “put me in coach . . .”). It is known that OVs are not only to entice a student to apply to a school, but also for the coach to determine whether a kid fits into the program. Indeed, sometimes OVs are offered to recruits lower on the recruiting list in the event that other recruits commit elsewhere. Even if your kid is the No. 1 recruit, desire is always important to convey. Coaches, like anyone else, want to know that if they support an athlete with admissions, the kid will attend, work hard at the program and succeed. A thank you note – written or otherwise – will convey desire. Written thank you notes (as opposed to emails) are important where a person wants to stand out, as in the instance of a highly competitive job application.
This is no different than a job applicant conveying that he or she really wants a job. I think we all know how important that is in business.
Agree with the thoughtful comments above. As a corrollary, handwritten notes (which increased in length and frequency as recruiting went on) always signaled seriousness to my son (and to us). They made us laugh a little, but still, they stood in stark contrast to the cut and paste emails he sometimes received from other coaches. And here’s the thing–it could well be that the coach is writing the same thing by hand to 20 different recruits, but the fact that he’d take the time to write that letter out longhand had more effect than the email that he might have sent.
However, I’m not discounting fenwaypark’s reaction either. One person’s “Wow, that’s impressive” may well be someone else’s “Wow, what a suck up.” That’s not my reaction, but it’s worthwhile to know that that’s out there. I suspect that a lot of younger coaches would tend toward the latter reaction.
gointhru, you are right that this isn’t a parenting contest. I only brought it up to illustrate that this is the long-standing policy in our home so we wouldn’t think twice about sending a thank-you note, that it would not be part of some calculation to suck up to a coach. It’s just our SOP. Thanks can be expressed in any number of ways; I just hate to think we are at a point where a written thank-you should be viewed as suspect. If someone thinks I’m trying to Eddie Haskell them, oh well.
In instances of a job interview, I’ve advised my kids to follow up immediately with an e-mail thanking the interviewer and asking a question to keep the conversation going, then he mails off a hand-written thank-you to the lead interviewer and the office staff with whom he might have interviewed. I think it makes a difference and is just a nice thing to do.
Couple of random thoughts as this thread begins to peter out:
Just to clarify, my kid would only write a thank-you to the coach, not the hosting teammates. Kids get cookies. at ds1’s school, kids who host overnights get a gift card to a local food place from the school. It’s not always just out of the goodness of their hearts that they host. 
Sincere question, not a challenge: Why would your kid write a thank you note to the coach and not the players who hosted if the purpose is to show good manners, good upbringing, politeness, common courtesy? The time and effort expended by players often exceeds that of the coach.
I hope the reason is not that the coach gets the thank you note because the coach can give something we want and we would like to curry favor, while the players can’t help us now (this is not necessarily true by the way) so no need to be equally polite and courteous to them. I hope that is not the reason
No prob. I think we sincerely just see things differently.
Because kids don’t trade in the same currency as adults, I guess. A thank-you note to a coach recognizes some level of deference maybe? For instance, last Thanksgiving, ds2 spent the holiday with his roommate’s family. They came to the college town and included my son in almost every family activity. He wrote roommate’s parents a thank-you note but probably just told roommate, “Hey, thanks, man.”
Thank you for that explanation.
I agree that recruits need to communicate in the appropriate “currency” as you put it, with coaches and players, whether that be text, email, phone, twitter or handwritten notes.
I do not agree that we see any things differently (except for your opinion that some of this is silly), but I will look back through the thread again to see what else you might have been referring to.
EDIT: Oh, and maybe we differ on whether the proper currency to thank a coach for an OV is a handwritten note or email/text/twitter. That’s cool.
Youdon’t,
I didn’t mean to suggest that anyone had offered up a parenting contest (but, if some one had, I certainly would lose). My sole point was that there could be recruiting reasons why a thank you to the coach of one sort or the other would be called for. Incidentally, while I don’t feel strongly about written versus email thank you notes to a coach, I agree that an email followed by a written thank you note is helpful in job interviews. It is so competitive to get a job these days, one needs every advantage possible to be noticed. Oh yeah, as you point out, it is also the polite thing to do!
One more thought,
I do believe that a coach’s use of handwritten notes has nothing to do with being polite. I strongly suspect that the compliance folks like this practice, as it is quite a bit easier to trace contact with a recruit through emails than it is through handwritten notes when no copies are maintained. To be sure, it may make a recruit feel special. But it is also more difficult to reconstruct.