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Post by redbeard2008 on Jan 20, 2018 19:07:48 GMT -5
It's where the uncommitted talent is. On the other hand, 14-year-olds aren't generally Prospective Student Athletes (PSAs), which means they are unlikely to have started ninth grade, which means that none of the recruiting "contact" restrictions apply to them. In effect, when it comes to recruiting, it is open season on 14-year-olds. Why hasn't the NCAA closed this obvious loophole? Definition of "Prospective Student-Athlete"
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Post by silversurfer on Jan 20, 2018 19:55:43 GMT -5
Very simple: if a coach doesn’t recruit early, someone else will.
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Post by redbeard2008 on Jan 20, 2018 23:13:39 GMT -5
80% of Div 1 softball coaches voted in favor of adopting the current Lacrosse recruiting rules, which sets "September 1 of junior year as the start date for all recruiting contact: unofficial visits, correspondence, telephone calls, and recruiting conversations at camps and clinics". NCAA Division I Coaches Take a Stand Against Early RecruitingThis tells me that most coaches feel trapped into recruiting the "kiddie court" and desperately want a Get Out of Jail card.
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Post by americasgame on Jan 20, 2018 23:41:57 GMT -5
Why is volleyball different from football or basketball in terms of kids sticking to verbal commitments? Do volleyball coaches stop recruiting kids who have announced a verbal commitment? In football for example, many kids won't even get a look from a B1G unless they have several MAC or similar offers first. Many times these kids commit early and have big senior years and change their commitments close to signing day, so obviously they are still being recruited up until the last minute.
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Post by redbeard2008 on Jan 21, 2018 0:27:46 GMT -5
Why is volleyball different from football or basketball in terms of kids sticking to verbal commitments? Do volleyball coaches stop recruiting kids who have announced a verbal commitment? In football for example, many kids won't even get a look from a B1G unless they have several MAC or similar offers first. Many times these kids commit early and have big senior years and change their commitments close to signing day, so obviously they are still being recruited up until the last minute. Well, even very successful volleyball coaches are being paid many times less than successful football and men's basketball coaches. They are probably more ethical due to the financial stakes being much, much, much lower. The athletes, being girls, are more likely to be inspired by romantic notions of loyalty, plus what is at stake is the college education, itself, and not a multi-million dollar pro signing bonus. Girls are also much less likely to play silly "hat" games just to be on ESPN. All the way around they are just better human beings than most boys manage to be.
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Post by empirevolleycoach on Jan 21, 2018 0:38:47 GMT -5
It's easier to get a commitment from an 8th grader than a senior. In 8th grade, these players and their families start hearing "scholarship" and "play for a top D1 school" being thrown around and don't even realize how big of a decision they're making. Although there is nothing official about a verbal commitment in 8th grade or senior year for that matter. However, schools won't spend their time recruiting a player who is always committed and since it's so early in the process, there is a good chance that player will never have exposure to other options. In addition, for those who chose to wait to commit (99.9%), showing interest very early on in the recruiting process is very important to recruits. Players will spend the next 4-5 years attending camps there, meeting players and coaches, touring the campus/facilities, and players/families gain an appreciation for the programs.
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Post by Sorry Ass Sal on Jan 21, 2018 1:43:39 GMT -5
Why? Because they have to. Because everyone else is. I have no coach friends that have ever said they enjoy recruiting that young.
If I was on the recruit side, especially as a parent, I would be hesitant because there's no guarantee the coach will still be there five years later. Granted they don't actually sign until senior year, but a lot of windows will have closed by then.
In 15 years will we be offering 6th graders?
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Post by rainbowbadger on Jan 21, 2018 8:13:48 GMT -5
I’m gonna come out and say that no, I don’t think an 8th grader or her family can make an informed decision about where they want to go to college.
When I was in 8th grade, my friends and I had big ideas. Some of us had really clear thoughts of where we anted to go to college and what we wanted to study. None of us wound up doing what we’d insisted we would be doing back at ar 13/14. But damn, were we sure.
Our parents also had clear thoughts about what we’d do. They were equally confident. I remember my mom telling me that she knew me better than I knew myself. But their ideas were both different from our ideas, and also not what we wound up doing.
My parents, having gone to college, had some idea of how to help me evaluate and choose. But they’d never been college athletes. They’d have been completely out of their realm if I’d been a PSA. How many other first-in-family PSAs are out there, with parents just blindly doing their best, easily taken advantage of by college coaches who want to snap up commitments and club coaches who want thr feathers in their cap? I don’t think there’s malicious intent on the part of either of those parties, but I do think they don’t necessarily always have the best interests of the kid in mind.
Coaches shouldn’t be allowed to verbal middle schoolers. Contact rules should be enforced in middle school. Very little contact should be allowed until sophomore year. Verbal commitments should be more binding on the school. Official visits should be allowed starting in the summer before junior year.
Of course many of the above would require the NCAA to acknowledge that verbals even exist, and they stubbornly refuse to do so. So I’m not holding my breath.
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Post by gogophers on Jan 21, 2018 9:01:15 GMT -5
80% of Div 1 softball coaches voted in favor of adopting the current Lacrosse recruiting rules, which sets "September 1 of junior year as the start date for all recruiting contact: unofficial visits, correspondence, telephone calls, and recruiting conversations at camps and clinics". NCAA Division I Coaches Take a Stand Against Early RecruitingThis tells me that most coaches feel trapped into recruiting the "kiddie court" and desperately want a Get Out of Jail card. That's nice. Now tell me what many coaches are doing/would do to circumvent any such restriction. Because many will. Because where there is will (to gain a competitive advantage), there's a way. As it is, coaches cultivate relationships with club coaches and use their summer camps as recruiting grounds, as ways of creating ties which may or may not bind. But they're hoping. None of this is to say that some rules, if adopted, wouldn't help to curb abuses, however one defines them. But if the coaching world hears of some 8th grader who touches 9'6" and is super coordinated to boot, you know someone will find some way to start the recruiting process going. It isn't like these girls are in a harem protected by a squadron of NCAA eunuchs. Is this really a problem? Yes, recruitment of 8th graders happens. But how many 8th graders are that tall, that good, that young? And that interested? It's the rare girl who commits, verbally, that early. But when it happens, the board predictably goes into a tizzy.
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Post by lo4um on Jan 21, 2018 9:08:49 GMT -5
I would like the rule of no or minimal contact until junior year. And you know some coaches will find a way to get the ball rolling early but if I’m a parent and a coach is recruiting my daughter in 9th grade when the rule says 11th, there’s a good chance my daughter wouldn’t be committing to that school
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Post by gogophers on Jan 21, 2018 9:12:56 GMT -5
I’m gonna come out and say that no, I don’t think an 8th grader or her family can make an informed decision about where they want to go to college. None? There are people who know, from elementary school on, that they want to be pro athetes, or actresses, or doctors, or in the military, and grow up to be just what they seized on so long ago. And no one is requiring a binding commitment. Why is it so surprising that some girls and some families think it best to make the decision early and be done with it, and avoid the hallaballoo of coaches later on pitching them the moon? And all this talk about whether the decision-making is good or bad at that early an age . . . every college choice, no matter when made, is to a significant degree, just a crap shoot--witness all the transfers. I don't know why people imagine 14 years old and their families as doing nothing more than throwing darts, whereas 17 years old are cool, collected customers calmly assessing the various merits of schools, like a Vegas odds maker. Like Rainbowbadger, I didn't know diddly when I was 14. But I didn't know diddly when I was 18, either . . . or 28. The me of today would not make the same decisions I made at much earlier ages. So what? It is a free country, or at least they used to say that when I was making those decisions long ago.
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Post by gogophers on Jan 21, 2018 9:24:52 GMT -5
Not only it is only a very small number of 8th graders who are good enough to get a coach interested enough to make an offer, it's also a fairly small number of schools and coaches to whom a top, but very young prospect would commit. So, an 8th grader picks Nebraska, whereas she might have picked Texas, if she hadn't committed early? Or Minn instead of PSU? I mean, so what? It isn't like she was snookered into committing, at least emotionally, if not legally, to Fly By Night U. The schools she and her family are choosing among are all fine schools with top coaches. Indeed, I don't know how some of these girls, with offers from everyone, everywhere, can finally pick only one lucky winner for their services. Must be nerve racking.
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Post by rainbowbadger on Jan 21, 2018 9:38:17 GMT -5
I’m gonna come out and say that no, I don’t think an 8th grader or her family can make an informed decision about where they want to go to college. None? There are people who know, from elementary school on, that they want to be pro athetes, or actresses, or doctors, or in the military, and grow up to be just what they seized on so long ago. And no one is requiring a binding commitment. Why is it so surprising that some girls and some families think it best to make the decision early and be done with it, and avoid the hallaballoo of coaches later on pitching them the moon? And all this talk about whether the decision-making is good or bad at that early an age . . . every college choice, no matter when made, is to a significant degree, just a crap shoot--witness all the transfers. I don't know why people imagine 14 years old and their families as doing nothing more than throwing darts, whereas 17 years old are cool, collected customers calmly assessing the various merits of schools, like a Vegas odds maker. Like Rainbowbadger, I didn't know diddly when I was 14. But I didn't know diddly when I was 18, either . . . or 28. The me of today would not make the same decisions I made at much earlier ages. So what? It is a free country, or at least they used to say that when I was making those decisions long ago. Maybe these kids aren’t making bad decisions. Maybe a handful of kids and families can make a good choice at 13/14. But not the majority. And these handful of kids are the beginning of a larger trend. Look what happened in lacrosse. We need rules to prevent this. A 16/17yo isn’t a perfect decision maker, but she’s a hell of a lot closer to who she’ll be in college than a 13/14yo. Three years is nothing to adults but it’s forever to a teenager. It’s 1/3-1/6 of their life. It’s a quarter of the part of their life they can remember. It’s huge.
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Post by karellen on Jan 21, 2018 9:44:33 GMT -5
Let's not put all this on the coaches. Kids, through club coaches and directors, and more aware of recruiting rules. Athletes know they can contact coaches and visit campus long before coaches can contact them and arrange for visits. Once a kid contacts a coach, comes to campus, comes to camp and does the same for "x" number of schools, then all those coaches are in a position of needing to give that young athlete a look or lose her to a competing school. Not "blaming" athletes for the craziness, just pointing out another angle to be considered.
Also, I wonder what stats would tell us about how often this happens compared to 20 years ago. Is it really happening more often (I think it is), or does social media just give us more awareness of when it happens. I know an athlete who sent a letter to coach at her dream school as an 8th grader about 20 years ago and committed to that school that same year. This is not a new phenomenon...
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Post by 1wvb on Jan 21, 2018 9:48:39 GMT -5
Answer to original question:
Boredom and competitive drive: When you have the next two years worth of recruiting done, you begin working on next year and then the next year.
Club culture: so much money in this and a search for "best offer" also known as highest ranked or perceived best program. Big commits drive more parents to a club because they must be doing something right. I'm dumbfounded by the limited knowledge of the rules, lack of imparting of researched and educated information to parents and athletes, and general desire to be nothing more than a recipient of money in our club system. There are exceptions and I am sure I will get hammered from them here - if it's not about the money and glamor associated, you would spend more time responding to the over 1200 college programs writing you texts, emails, and general correspondence wanting to learn more about your athletes.
Respect: "most" volleyball coaches respect a commitment and do not continue recruiting athletes after they commit. MBB and football have to recruit their committed kids so hard they do not have time to move too far ahead in recruiting. They spend a tremendous amount of time recruiting their commits. It's to the point where they've hired additional non-coaching staff personnel to write general correspondence for them. If our culture were to move toward this - recruiting committed kids - it would slow down this trend and I believe would slow down the transfer rate and the desire of Power 5 programs to cherry pick missed athletes from other programs - club culture desire to move a kid to the "best" program mentality.
I am not suggesting any of the above does not have a rebuttal argument. I could write it myself. These are areas I believe influence recruiting in the current culture. Feel free to agree or disagree.
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