Skip to main content

Reply to "."

There is no one right way to do this.  And COVID may make conventional wisdom wrong for at least the 2021s and maybe beyond...  If you haven't already, I encourage you to do some searches for prior threads on HSBaseballweb about HA D3s, and on Headfirst and Showball--there is a lot of great info on this site.

My son was HS class of 2020 and will be at an HA D3 this fall as a RHP.  We live in the southeast, but almost all the schools he was targeting were in the northeast and mid-Atlantic.  That meant weekend tournaments rarely got him any useful exposure--Headfirst and Showball were the keys for him.  And this site was the source of 99% of my info about the recruiting process.  

My son made a list of every school he'd seriously consider that was also a place he could realistically hope to play.  (So Ivies and few other D1s made the list, but not Stanford or Duke.)  He started emailing that list of 30 or 40 schools near the end of sophomore summer, once he had some independent metrics to share that were good enough to potentially attract some interest.  Those early messages mostly yielded camp invites and a few "thanks for your note, keep in touch" responses.  He probably didn't need to start emails until spring of his junior year.  On the other hand, the head coach of the college he will be attending kept up a fairly regular email correspondence with him starting with that initial round of messages, so you never know...  My advice is to go ahead and send emails once you have something worth sending.  You may not get a response after the first round, but keep emailing for a bit and see if you pique a coach's interest.  

The boy went to HF in August after his sophomore year and to Showball that fall.  Those were mainly for the experience of introducing himself to coaches and getting used to the format.  Those showcases did get the boy on some schools' radar, I suppose, but HA D3s don't really recruit until after junior year, when they can see six semesters of grades.  July after junior year son went to SB, and that was the camp that really seemed to matter.  He got some texts and calls before that, but after SB is things got serious.

Read the previous threads here about how to prepare for SB or HF.  If you don't lay the groundwork, they aren't likely to be very useful.  Your son also should take the SAT or ACT before those showcases--coaches will ask about scores.

My son did one school camp.  That turned out to be a lot of time and money without a good result.  But other folks here swear by school camps.  As I said, there is no one correct way to do this.

Cast a wide net with emails, and your son should talk with any school he would even potentially be willing to attend.  In my son's case, it seemed almost random which schools showed interest.  He would get serious attention from some places while others in the same conference never responded to multiple emails.  (He's a pitcher, so it wasn't about positional needs, and neither academics nor the quality of baseball at the respective schools seems to explain things either.)  My son talked or texted at various points with a lot of different schools (maybe 15+?), including a few D1s, but some of those coaches ghosted unpredictably, some disappeared for a while then came back.  It's a strange process, and you can't take anything for granted.  

This site is a great resource and the community is generous with time and advice.  Do your homework first by reading up on old threads, and you'll find people are very willing to answer specific questions.  Good luck to your son.

Last edited by Chico Escuela
×
×
×
×