Early commit

Mostly, I've seen situations where a college coach speaks or makes arrangements through a travel coach (acting as a proxy) for the recruit to visit the campus.  Once the recruit is on campus both parties can speak freely.

He can just DM the player via Twitter. Not an email or call OR text.

^^But it is "contact".

Some schools may steer clear of this method.  Especially schools that may have had their hands slapped in the past (they don't want to do anything that could be questionable).

I head from a friend that a D1 college coach won't get on this board because of the possible "contact".

Also many travel teams play games on college campuses and once they are on the campus they can talk to the coach all they want. 

A player doesn't have to be on campus.  If a college coach wants to talk to a player...he can call the player's travel coach...or even his HS coach...and ask him to have the player call him.  As long as the player makes the call, they can talk as much as they'd like.

This is a little off topic, but if you are thinking of an early commitment, I would advise strongly against it 95% of the time.  Committing early and then changing his mind has really hurt my son.  Thankfully, my son is a 6'4" LHP, and things have really picked up lately; but decommitting can be a detriment.  Even if coaches are still interested, you'll have to answer constant questions about why you decommitted. It's just not worth it.  

Have some personal experience here. Sorry in advance for the long post.

My son, who is the opposite of ryno's, a sub 6 footer RHP got his 1st offer in August after his sophmore year pitching in a PG event where he was 84-86, touching 88. 1 week later we had a very solid mid major D1 offer. So, what do you do? We had plans to go to Ft Myers in October and we had heard that event would be a gating item in the recruiting process. We asked for time to go there and throw and asked for patience from the HC at the Mid Major on the decision, he agreed. This was after they repeated said during the visit to "please compare "________ U" to other schools so you know this is the place for your etc before you make your decision"......so we wanted to do that very thing having been to no other campuses previously.

We go to Ft Myers in October. Son throws a decent 5 innings start with a few mishaps on defense, leaves the game down 1 run. We ultimately lost by 1 on a play at home where we sent our guy from 3rd. Son threw well, not up to 88 and i think was 84-86 but his tempo was great and he was grinding on the mound, battling every batter, i think the game was 2 or 3 to 2 them.

As soon as we got home, we had two schools interested. An Ivy league and a Big10 bottom dweller in the standings who was rebuilding.We knew the Ivy league would be a big challenge, it's in the middle of the largest city in the U.S and my son is smart, but not that smart. A note on the Mid Major...after we got back form Ft Myers they found out about the other school's interest and tried to play this guilt card on us about "we were here first when nobody else was etc" and gave my son a deadline ( curiously before the visits we had scheduled to the other schools) to which he refused their offer asap. They did NOT want him to visit anywhere else like the said on the tour and visit, that was Bull$%&#.

The Big10 school was appealing because it was Big D1 and that was my son's goal. We visited a camp in December and toured the campus. Threw a pen and heard no immediate feedback, got no love and he thought...in his words, "Maybe this isn't the place for me". Mind you, he got interest and feedback at the previous camp he visited so it was a bit abnormal for that not to happen. 2 weeks later to our surprise and glee, we got an offer and i will call it an average offer.

Now, i had heard that the prime time to be recruited in the summer before your Sr year. I must have called ,emailed and asked 50 people (didn't know about this forum yet) "Should we commit this early?" I got no real honest , i would call it experiential feedback. All i got was..you should take it that is a great school and it is a big d1 and schools are locking kids up earlier and earlier, especially pitchers. My son took the offer and this was January of this year. He was a Jr in HS. He stayed in the gym and preparing for the upcoming HS season like he had all fall.

He started the 1st game of the season as a Jr ahead of 2 seniors and hit 92 on the gun. He ended up with 101 strikeouts, an ERA under 1.00 across 15 games, giving up 18 runs — eight earned — on 40 hits. He paced a pitching staff that owned a 1.187 ERA and helped his HS a 24-8 overall record and the Elite 8 in the state playoffs. Even with all this success and change to his velo, he was committed to the Big10 school with no thoughts of de-committing. Over the 6 months of time from January to June absolutely no one contacted him about college baseball, the honor code of the coaching fraternity was in full effect. Quite different from what i was told by some after he committed in that a big d1 offer would validate him and more offers would come. (Also football recruiting is apparently uber-compeitive and there is no fraternity or hand off code of a verbal commit) No offers came.

He has a good summer. He gets better. He plays up in an 18u PG event and sits 92-93, throws a CG shutout, 1 hitter in front of a lot of folks. Lots of radar guns/scouts there and a few crosscheckers. That's when he started thinking about the distance to the Big10 school, the cold weather and asked me if i would be upset with him if he wanted to decommit? I asked him why, he mentioned the above reasons and said two things: "I want you guys to be able to come watch me pitch" and "I want to play at home down here in the South". I told him to be prepared for absolutely NO ONE to want you once you decommit, to be ready to play ball at a small school if that is your only choice...possible Juco or even small D2. He said he was willing to take that chance and he was ready to compete at the D1 level. He called the pitching coach and he decommitted then and there, that was a Sunday night in late June. The didn't take it well and frankly the p coach was pretty upset and although professional in his tone, really tried to make my kid feel like shit about not holding of keeping his word. Even to the point where he said, "If a school calls me and asks about you, i wont have anything good to say to them about you". My son said the thing i coached him on prior to the call....."I'm sorry you feel that way coach." and hung up.

Once the word got out on the decommittment, we were on a big D1, uber competitive SEC campus 4 days later and got an offer. That was CRAZY! That along with 8 other offers is what happened once he decommitted and it was well worth it. Long story, w/ happy ending and life lesson filled journey that i hope can help others that are lucky enough to experience the recruiting process.

He found the perfect school & coaches on an awesome campus in the south at an ACC school with a tradition of winning and committed there in July.

Shoveit:

Thanks for sharing.  Real story complete with fear, frustration, pain and success.  All from just a high school kid and his family.  Not bad for a stupid game.  I applaud the personal triumph for your son and family.

I agree.  While I am not a fan of super early commitments nor of backing out of them at all, your story is fresh and raw and it helps me see the other side of the latter a little bit better.

Have no idea (nor do I want to know) who the Big10 coach is, but its disappointing (but not surprising) that a coach would speak those words.  D1 coaches across the land cut kids off every year for lack of performance among other things.  No, not all of them, but its not uncommon either.  And this coach either does it or knows about it - and to speak those words to a 17/18-year old isn't good IMO.  I mighta thought what he said, but I couldn't have brought myself to say it nor to trash a kid even if it seemed warranted.  Not classy at all and woulda made my advice to son as a parent genuinely easy at that point.

Thanks!

That is a great story, and I am happy for your son, but I would think it is the exception and not the rule.  Decommitting as you mentioned in your post can be hard on a kid and his family.  I just don't think it is worth it.  Too much stress.  I would strongly advise not committing early unless you are absolutely sure.

I will say that the Big10 HC called a local university immediately after the decommit (around midnight that night) and recommended to the HC of the local school to not let him leave the state, to sign him. He said that he was a good kid who wanted to be closer to home and was a good baseball player. Basically they lost a good kid. That was a class move told to me by the local school's HC. Unfortunately they had no 2015 $$ left or that is what we were told and we moved on to other schools. Local HC said they just "missed" on my kid. Funny part is....the PC of the local school had 5 to 6 email/texts from my son's travel coach from the previous year's time asking him to come see him pitch, telling him he was the real deal and he ignored all of them. He did admit to that and apologized about missing my kid in the process....that i guess, is just how busy and competitive it is our there in the real world of recruiting.