First post...
We are so confused as to what to do... background: my son, a 2014 SS, will be a four year varsity player. He has a number of post season accolades, is generally somewhere in the top 50 players in the state on just about every ranking report, invited to the area code tryouts, but is not what I would call the cream of the crop. He has a great glove, 4 fielding errors in the past two HS seasons, but is not particularly fast (7.15). He has been a very good hitter 380, 25 doubles, 4 HR his so/jr years, but has an ave arm that tops out pitching at 84. The coaches he plays for love him, but he would never really stand out at a showcase, you have to see him play for a while. He will not turn 18 until the end of next May, and is 5'11", 170. To top this off, this past summer he went through the worst slump of his life through most of the big showcases, just wasn't very consistent. So, consequently he is getting little (we will come see you at the Sr classic) interest from D1's which is really where he wanted to play. He still has dreams of getting drafted someday. He has 5-6 D3's, very very good academic schools, and one that is generally a top ten program competing for a national title each year after him. He also has two D2's that have done everything except give him an offer and say they will talk to him at the Sr classic in a couple weeks. He has an offer from one (and I expect another shortly) of the AZ juco's.
My goals for him:
1) to get a degree
2) to have a great baseball experience
3) to come out of said degree with as little debt as possible. I believe most (not all) undergrads are pretty generic. I can't contribute a lot towards the school, so it would be grants and loans (3.5 gpa, so not a lot of academic).
The jucos are telling him that he would be wasting time at a D2/3 and they can give him 400-500 ab's, make him stronger and faster the next two years and move him on to a big conference D1. The D3's talk about a good education and competitive baseball. Son cares about the baseball, I'm more about the education.
BUT...even if he got 80% at some of these D3's, he's still $6K-$12K out of pocket each year. Juco would cost about $4K total for two years. I'm leaning towards juco, but I think son would also like to get out on his own.
Any experiences or advice on the juco route? The D2/3 route? We want to try and get this decided in the next couple months, so we can just enjoy fall ball and his Sr year. I think some of the slump is probably attributed to pressure to get recruited, as a lot of his friends and teammates were committing to PAC 12, big west schools over the summer.