Here’s something that might deflate the egos of some college coaches. 🙂
We recently had a 2018 recruit on campus for a visit. This is actually a girl who we brought to campus in Spring 2017. We made her an offer then, but she was at the beginning of her process. As a result, she wasn’t ready to make a commitment then. We then kind of fell out of touch with her over the Summer. Approaching the first Juniors tournament of the year we were going to for recruiting, we looked to see if she had committed somewhere else, but didn’t see any indication she had. That being the case, I stopped by her court to watch her play. She did well. Better than what I remembered.
We were all set to reach out to her again, but she beat us to it. She texted the head coach to express her interest, and that led to her coming back to campus again. This was mainly about giving her mom a chance to have a look as she wasn’t on the trip the first time. It also, though, gave her a chance to meet all our new players. We only have three left from when she visited the first time.
Now, in the middle of all this the head coach was getting ready to leave following her resignation. She made her announcement to the team two days before the visit and spoke this this recruit that same night to let her know as well in case it mattered.
Nope! Didn’t matter at all.
We got the girl’s commitment the night after her visit.
Further, of the four girls who committed to us earlier, only one decided to rethink things. She did ask to be let out of her commitment, making it sound like she wanted to stay closer to home. At the same time, though, we continued to talk with 2018 prospects and getting them on campus.
Guess the head coach doesn’t matter. 😀
Honestly, I think this is the way it should be for at least the majority of recruits. It should be mainly about the school.
Follow-up: That said, we had three prospects lined up to replace the setter who de-committed. All wanted to wait to see who the new head coach would be before signing. Because that process dragged out so long, though, one-by-one they all fell away. So it’s a mixed bag.
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