Just had a conversation with my wife about our FaceTime with child #1 earlier tonight. She is on campus at her Patriot League school. The mens/womens hockey and basketball teams along with another 100 or so kids that need to be on campus are and everyone is doing distanced or virtual school. We started her recruiting journey fall of 9th grade (they started early in womens hockey if you were elite) but did not commit until early in the summer before her senior year. The difference between visiting a campus/talking with a coach was light years different between 9th & 11th grade. After seeing nearly every HA D1/D3 school in the NE she had a very good idea of what she wanted by the time she committed and then even more so prior to signing her LOI.
The times that we had together talking about pros/cons/costs and opportunities available to her as an athlete were invaluable to her maturing and was a gift to me and my wife (we only get to have them around so long...enjoy every minute of it!). My kid was fairly mature (and really fun) as a senior but she is light years more mature now. While face timing her she was talking about how she was doing her laundry while updating her planner for the week and then rolling out and stretching in her room. We used to remind her to do most of those things and now she is smoothly transitioning between all of them while visiting with us. Awesome!
We dragged the 2022 baseball player with us on some of those visits and he visited many a campus and took his first several tours his 8th grade summer. He was pretty bored early on but has already said things to us when visiting other schools with him essentially letting us know that he got way more out of those early tours we dragged him on then we thought.
SUGGESTION for those with kids early in this process or just entering HS...start to visit schools now! Take an extra 2 hours on the next family vacation to drive thru the University of wherever and check out their baseball park and wander thru the campus. Take a tour if you can sometime. I recommend taking your kid out of school some afternoon or day and visit 2 or 3 of the best (hopefully different) schools within a couple hours of you. Take a tour of a HA school if you can, visit a mega campus and a smaller school, visit a rural campus and an urban one, D3, D1, JUCO. Look to fly or drive to a city like Boston or Philly or Charlotte or Chicago or Cincinnati or LA or Denver or Atlanta. Every one of those cities has 5-15 schools that are totally different but great in their own ways. You can easily see 3-5 schools in a day if you are not doing tours.
Hard to get any tours with the Pandemic happening but can definitely get a feel for what the campus looks like and their athletic facilities. The difference between Villanova's baseball stadium and Miami of Ohio's are vast. Villanova's is 15-20 minutes from campus (good luck getting any fans) and Miami of Ohio's is surrounded by dorms. That is a significant thing in my kids mind. Walking to the ballpark and getting into the cages to hit at anytime is a big deal to him. Getting a ride or driving 20 minutes in traffic to the ballpark everyday is not appealing to him...