Coach contact policies make recruiting hard for student athletes
If you really think about it, getting recruited is like marketing yourself. You are selling your skills and assets that are associated with your particular sport. Being fast, strong, tall or even left-handed can be some attributes that help you get far in the recruiting process. But the limitations on how these players can contact coaches at young ages is ridiculous.
Recruiting for students depends on what type of school they want to go to and their academics. After all, the coaches usually do not find you, you find them. After a bit of emailing and scouting at your games, you might sign or verbally commit. These words are what make the recruiting process confusing for students.
Being great at your sport from a young age is beneficial; you get additional acknowledgment from coaches and some might even email you. For example, a coach says, “You will be a great fit for our team in the future, I think it would be great if you can join us!” Maybe this coach is from your dream school and has everything you are looking for, so you put all your eggs in one basket.
This is being verbal; you and the coach are talking, but the coach is not asking for your grades or transcript so nothing official has happened yet. But, this can leave athletes confused about their future. Players may feel that this a verbal commitment to a college and subsequently stop looking for other potential colleges. Since college coaches are limited in the ways that they communicate with young players, clearing up this confusion is not a simple task.
Sometimes players find themselves clearly committed to a college. They send their transcript, their test scores and by sophomore year, they already know what college they are going to. However, in some cases, the coaching staff will change and players committed this early can be let go as late as their senior year. Changes in coaching staff can occur and the players who are unknown to the changed are the ones being punished.
Changes in coaching can happen randomly. It will not be a sudden shift in the middle of their senior year, but if you committed your sophomore year and coaching changes the end of your junior year, they could let you go and then you are left rushing to find a new college team in the fall of your senior year. The way that college coaches change is different and can depend on many factors. So, communicating with prospective students should be more expandable so problems like these are less likely to happen.
I understand that scholarships are given and some choose to play the sport for fun, since the majority of students who get recruited do not have a career in the sport they played in college. When recruiting, colleges should be thinking about long-term goals, and it might be hard to do that with all the limitations coaches have with communicating. By opening the restrictions on the communication process between coaches and players, the recruiting process can an easier and more reliable system.
