Many of you know that I’m involved in the JuCo baseball scene in Texas and that my youngest son played JuCo ball in Oklahoma. As a result, over the past 5 years, I have been around a lot of JuCo players and parents at countless games and events - including 3 JuCo World Series. At these events I talk to players and parents about their “college baseball experience” every chance I get. That’s the only way to know what’s really going on. A common theme among the JuCo players (and their parents) that bounced down from D1 programs (for whatever reason) is how badly they were treated at the D1 program that they left. Their comments always involve words like shocked, surprised, disappointed, and misled. They talk about the over-recruiting that resulted in no opportunity for them. They talk about running poles at 5:30 am for no reason. They talk about receiving no individual instruction. They talk about being embarrassed by their coaches in front of their teammates. They talk about having their confidence beaten out of them. Mostly they talk about how glad they are to be gone from their first school and how they wished they would have gone JuCo right out of HS. Keep in mind that I’m talking about good kids - not troublemakers - that did nothing wrong more than any other kid. They are casualties of an over supply of players combined with a coaching style that is hard, tough & cold. It’s something that all freshmen baseball players go thru to some extent. Some adapt to the impersonal business aspect of big time college baseball better than others. And some situations are worse than others. But it’s a reality that all incoming freshmen should try to prepare for as best they can. One good thing to do would be playing in a collegiate summer league the summer after HS graduation instead of playing Legion Ball. Spend time around older players. Especially if your player is attempting to make the roster at a program that competes for conference championships. The D1 recruiting experience is seductive. It creates the illusion that players are really wanted -when in reality only 50% (or less) of every recruiting class is wanted. The school just wants 90 days to figure out which 50% they want to keep around. The unwanted half is summarily dismissed one way or another at semester or at end of freshmen year. And hardly any of them seem to understand this reality the first day they set foot on campus. This topic has been discussed in other threads but not so much in this one. It’s much less of an issue in D3 than other classifications IMO but it can exist anywhere. I believe that after freshman year is the time to evaluate if you are in the right place or not - and it’s the time to make a hard decision if necessary.