What's the Biggest Factor in the Recruiting Timeline? The Calendar

Your kid is a high school student-athlete. It’s their senior year and, despite a strong season, you still haven’t heard from very many college coaches. You’ve heard other kids from other sports around school talk about the coaches with whom they are talking, and some have already made their collegiate decision.

So why have coaches not been active in recruiting your kid? There could be a million different reasons why, but you might be overlooking the most obvious and overlooked reason. Maybe it’s the calendar.

                College coaches are creatures of habit. Those who have been at it for years like to stick to a calendar. If they’ve been successful, they’ve probably found a recruiting timetable that works for their sport at their school and they generally stick to it.

                I spoke last week to a parent of a potential division 3 football player who had this exact concern. His son is a solid player and an above-average student, and the family was frustrated than they’d only heard from one or two coaches. I told him to be patient.

                Although the process is becoming somewhat expedited at a lot of colleges looking for early decision candidates, the calendar for small college football has always been that coaches do the bulk of their recruiting visits to high schools after their season ends. There are exceptions to this rule, but talk to any small college football coach and he will tell you that mid-November through mid-January are reserved for two things; Recruiting visits and the annual football coaches’ convention.

                Spring sports like lacrosse, baseball and softball generally take the opposite seasonal approach. They want all of their recruiting done before their spring season starts. They’re more accustomed to watching summer showcases and tournaments so they can get their on-campus visits wrapped up during the fall semester. Most of them would love to have a verbal commitment from their recruits before their teams start practices in January.

                The other major factor in the calendar is the quality or prestige of institution. If the college at which your kid is looking to play is routinely ranked highly nationally, those seats tend to fill up earlier in the process, especially for great schools with a small student body. However, if your child’s top choices are large state schools with high acceptance rates and plenty of beds on campus, you can usually make that decision after graduating high school and still be relatively confident that you won’t be excluded from that school’s fall semester.

                Thirdly, the quality of program often factors in to the recruiting calendar. Nationally-ranked teams often want to know early and can help you expedite the admissions and financial aid process so they can wrap up their recruiting class early and get a jump on recruiting juniors while lower-level competitors are only left with the kids that the big dogs didn’t want.

                So, if your kid plays a spring sport, wants to attend an elite institution and has not heard from that school’s coach by the fall of their senior year, they either need to initiate the contact with the coach, re-evaluate what they want to do for college, or both. But, if your kid is a fall athlete, believes they would fit in best athletically on a mid-level division 3 team, and has decent enough grades to get into and receive some academic scholarship money at those schools, they don’t need to worry about hearing from coaches until December of their senior year or so.

                Most colleges don’t treat student-athletes like general population students. They know that those student-athletes graduate at a greater rate, give back at a greater rate, and do more to promote the school off campus than those who are not as heavily involved on campus. As a parent of a prospective collegiate student-athlete, you should not be trying to equal the timeline of a non-athlete-family who has already made their college decision.

Your timeline is different. Knowing that timeline can help you make a decision at the right time and for the right reasons. If you’re not sure about your sport’s recruiting timeline, check with your high school coach and the parents of older children in the same sport.