2021 D3/HA D1 Check-In

Mine's a 2022, so it's too early. If you want info on the schools your 2021 is being looked at for, some us might have some experience. I know I got a crash course on HA's with my 2018.

Thanks LuckyCat for starting this thread.  I have a 2021, MIF/OF, and we are going to Dynamic Combine in VA on 7/7 and then HeadFirst Aug. 3-4.  Have read a lot on here about HF, but please message me with any info you can share on HF. We are planning a sort of family vacation around the trip.  Never been to Long Island, so any info on great places to eat, see or the beaches are appreciated.    

For those interested in HA D3, just saw this from NCAA.  Looks like minimum number of games has been reduced to 17 which is probably good for their finances and might help save several programs.  

www.ncaa.org/about/resources/m...er-required-contests

Hookslide:

There are your usual restaurants and fast food places near HF, with most in the vicinity of the hotels. I wish I remember the name of the diner I went to and got a nice steak.

Here is a tip: Bring $$ for the gasoline. I don't know if it's the same as a few years back but the price per gallon differed by about 60 cents more per gallon if you paid by credit card. I remember going inside (before I pumped) and asking if the two prices on the pumps were accurate and they were. I have never seen that (maybe a nickel difference here and there).

@Hookslide posted:

Thanks LuckyCat for starting this thread.  I have a 2021, MIF/OF, and we are going to Dynamic Combine in VA on 7/7 and then HeadFirst Aug. 3-4.  Have read a lot on here about HF, but please message me with any info you can share on HF. We are planning a sort of family vacation around the trip.  Never been to Long Island, so any info on great places to eat, see or the beaches are appreciated.     

Others here will know more about Long Island generally (I lived on the Connecticut side of the sound years ago, but haven't spend much time actually on the island), but I feel confident saying that greater Yaphank is really not a vacation destination.  Not busting on the place--I just mean it's an area where people live and work, not somewhere you travel for a getaway.  It's mostly standard strip mall-type shops and restaurants.  My advice is to stay near the fields for HF, but I'd head elsewhere to see the LI beaches.

Expect a lot of traffic.  There are 7.5+ million people on LI, plus many more who are trying to get to the Hamptons from NYC on the weekends.  Many beaches require town parking permits, but there are parks that are open to the public.  I hear there are some places that are still (relatively) uncrowded and unspoiled--if I were going to spend some time on LI, I'd find someone who knew the area to help me plan.  I'd expect lodging, etc. to be very expensive.  And speaking of expensive, you also could head into Manhattan, although this will be a strange summer there I imagine.

Final Long Island note:  If you are a geek like me, the Tesla museum in Shoreham is supposed to be very cool.  (That's Nikolai Tesla, not the car company.) 

As Chico says, the area around Baseball Heaven isn't particularly  a great place to visit.  But you can get to NYC easily, and that's still worth the trip without Broadway etc. going on, arguably even better since Times Square, Wall Street, and Central Park are almost devoid of tourists.  As for beaches, I'd avoid the Hamptons in summer unless you're a celebrity and/or have a few million to drop on a beach place and go instead to the North Fork. Cute towns, wineries, great farm stands, nice people and a slower pace of life.  Orient Point is beautiful. 

I never got there, but the beach at Smith Point looks really nice, and is very close to Yaphank. Joe's Pizza is always good for an inexpensive, good  meal...I wish i could remember the name of the local restaurant only a few miles away from Baseball heaven. Homey, inexpensive, really good. Not fancy.

Not too much to report. Even camp invites are extremely quiet. I’m not sure what we expected—maybe there is more to it that we are not seeing (budgets not released?). I haven’t seen a lot of commitments either

The Ivy commitments are starting to get posted. I know one that wasn't nailed down until after junior year transcripts we official.

It is still very early for HA D3s.  In a normal year, not much happens until very late summer and into fall.  And this isn't a normal year, of course.

My 2021 will be attending his second virtual prospect tour/visit at a HA D3 next week.  (He got a lot out of his first one, surprisingly, and came away liking the school and the coaches quite a bit.)  Neither of these schools has seen him play yet, but both will have an opportunity at either HF or SB (if they happen).  In addition to those two, a third HA D3 suddenly has started texting him after games to get a rundown on how it went. He had mixed results at his last tournament and it was a real life lesson for him figuring out how to be honest and yet still try to put his best foot forward!

A couple of other D3s that weren't on my son's list of schools have emailed his coach asking to have my son "reach out."  Each time, he has had to sit down and think about whether that school is one he would want to attend.  Mostly, he has said no thanks, primarily based on location or majors offered.

I'm struck by how many opportunities to grow and mature he is tackling right now with the coach interactions and the decisions he's making.

Although my son's games have been live-streamed, it doesn't appear most of the coaches he's communicating with are watching them.  We did see a few D3 coaches standing around behind home plate at LakePoint during the last PBR tournament.

So far, only one school he's interested in has said they plan on having a camp in the fall.  He will go if they hold it.

We have told our son we will do all we can to try to get him physically on campus of any school he is seriously entertaining an offer from.  It seems crazy to me that coaches would make offers, and players would accept them, without either having physically seen the other, but I think there's going to be more of that this year.  Talk about leaps of faith!

2021 received a transcript request with the note academic reads begin July 1. Oh, and the dead period was extended cancelling/postponing some important camps... 2021 has been playing pick up games with players from multiple high schools without coaches, parents or umpires and may be having more fun than the rest of us!

We watched the Showball Zoom meeting last night.  They say they are going ahead with their August showcases and that they will have live-streaming with real time stats for the D1 coaches to watch.  This is a step in the right direction I suppose, but I'm wondering why they didn't just move the whole thing away from Long Island months ago.  Now, with Gov. Cuomo's 14-day quarantine order, players and D2/D3 coaches from "hot spot" states won't be able to come.  Georgia doesn't meet the criteria for a hot spot yet, but at the rate its going, it may very well be there by August.

@Los Angeles 2021 Parent posted:

2021 received a transcript request with the note academic reads begin July 1. Oh, and the dead period was extended cancelling/postponing some important camps... 2021 has been playing pick up games with players from multiple high schools without coaches, parents or umpires and may be having more fun than the rest of us!

Getting a request for a pre-read is a great sign--congrats!  One word of advice (which you may already know):  Last summer, I thought that pre-reads were indicators that an offer was probably coming.  But my son got successful pre-reads from a number of schools that never offered him.  So again, a very good sign, but your son needs to keep working the process everywhere he's interested until he actually has an offer in hand that he wants to accept.  

@Chico Escuela posted:

Getting a request for a pre-read is a great sign--congrats!  One word of advice (which you may already know):  Last summer, I thought that pre-reads were indicators that an offer was probably coming.  But my son got successful pre-reads from a number of schools that never offered him.  So again, a very good sign, but your son needs to keep working the process everywhere he's interested until he actually has an offer in hand that he wants to accept.  

I thought this at first too, but then my son got a couple of requests for pre-read documents BEFORE the coach had even talked to him.  That's  when we knew it isn't always as much of a sign as we thought.  Schools that do it this way are really asking a lot of their admissions offices!

I'm glad that recruiting is now happening - out of curiosity, how is it being done?  Through video?  Showcases?  Tournaments?

@anotherparent posted:

I'm glad that recruiting is now happening - out of curiosity, how is it being done?  Through video?  Showcases?  Tournaments?

It is a mix so far.  Virtual prospect tours/visits via zoom, watching live-streamed tournament games, sending video from recent games at their request, followed up by personal zooms, phone calls, and texts.  We are set to go to Showball and HeadFirst in early-mid August, but things are moving so fast now that I wonder if that will be necessary.  I think this is earlier than a normal year, and that Covid probably has a lot to do with it.  

@LuckyCat posted:

It is a mix so far.  Virtual prospect tours/visits via zoom, watching live-streamed tournament games, sending video from recent games at their request, followed up by personal zooms, phone calls, and texts.  We are set to go to Showball and HeadFirst in early-mid August, but things are moving so fast now that I wonder if that will be necessary.  I think this is earlier than a normal year, and that Covid probably has a lot to do with it.  

When my son was going this route (D3-only, really) it started in earnest in July and he'd pretty much wrapped things up by September, other than waiting for the ED response deadline (coach wasn't worried about him getting accepted, but we were a little, though we know now there wasn't any reason to be).

Kind of amusing how much difference 4 years makes in the technology, he did everything by phone except for the occasional email and a video or two on youtube. I wonder if Zoom or the like will be standard going forward even once the immediate need for it now has passed.

HF has been really good at pivoting to a new location and it appears they added a lot of colleges that will hopefully be watching online. They have done a great job of explaining all the safety protocols too.  We are headed up there today.  Wondering what everyone's thoughts are on the online video format?  If you are headed to it, good luck to your son and feel free to DM me.  

@Hookslide Look forward to hearing how it went. Currently set for a Showball event in Oct in FL, but the Sept HF event may be more alluring.

Good luck to your son!