I have heard of kids doing this, but I am not sure what it means. Is either side actually committed, or could a better prospect or an injury or a poor academic or athletic performance change things?
I hear this mostly in lacrosse and basketball, does it happen in all sports?
It is rare that someone commits before Junior year these days. For the vast majority of sports, a coach cannot connect with a recruit until June 15th after sophomore year.
A commitment, at that point, but also the vast reality of commitments, are no more than gentlemen’s agreements. The athletes agree’s to apply and attend the school (ED if available) and the coach agrees to support that application. Acceptance is almost always a sure thing since there is usually a pre-read of the application.
Only D1 recruits receiving athletic scholarships have some sort of contract, and those don’t get signed until late fall of Senior year at the earliest.
A gentlemen’s agreement is still an agreement, and it should be taken seriously, but no one is legally bound and things do go sideways occasionally… injury, grade drops, coach changes, athlete develops more and gets a better offer (athlete changing their mind is ethically complicated, IMO, but it happens).
These are just verbal commitments and not binding for either party. As crazy as it seems, I’ve seen verbal commits for 8th graders in both basketball and baseball. Neither worked out in the long run.
Saige Damrow (Wisconsin Volleyball) had her first offers in 7th grade. She committed to Wisconsin in 8th grade and ended up going there. Not the norm.
Wow 8th grade seems super young!
Also, the rules changed.
Right. Women’s volleyball, baseball, men’s basketball, and men’s lacrosse (the sports mentioned here) all now have no-direct-contact rules from a coach to a player until the summer after sophomore year (dates vary by sport, but are between June and September). All of these sports have had a history of aggressive recruiting tactics and early commitments. Now, there is still a ton of background scouting and roundabout conversations going on, and college coaches are seeing these athletes play much earlier, but the actual discussion and commitment process cannot start until that summer.
(Largely by coincidence, I do know three baseball recruits to Stanford who both committed early freshman year or earlier - all before these rules were in place - and all commitments worked out for everyone involved. I’m still happy to see the rules, though.)
we see lots of verbal commits to d1 programs by female soccer players, with a large percentage verbally committed by the summer before senior year. I would even say that the top 20% of each class is verbally committed by Sep 1 of their junior year. sadly with the roster caps hitting next year, a handful of those early commits are now having their offers pulled and have to open up their recruiting so maybe the early verbals will lessen a bit moving forward
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. If you’d like to reply, please flag the thread for moderator attention.