Injury with offers pending

Sorry to hear of your son's injury.  The timing isn't great, and I hope he is better soon.

I agree the pending offers is something you want to address asap.   I would disclose the injury, prognosis and timeline to recovery.   In addition, I would have your son  specifically ask the coach if this injury situation is going to be an issue or complication going forward with his recruitment, possible NLI signing, and admission.  If it is not, you have your answer.   If it is, you have something to think about with regard to next steps, and options.   

Fenway,

Do you think that it would be wise for my husband or I to call the coaches today since our son is still in no condition to field that kind of call (surgery today)?  I know that baseball is a small world and we want the coach to know that we had no intention of hiding anything, and you are right the timing is awful!  Our son still had a school who wanted to see him play at the Fall Classic and that is out of the question now.

Have your son do the calling as suggested by Fenway.

Our son broke his leg the fall of his senior season. He had signed a LOI and the coaches were planing on honoring their end of the deal no matter what. To make a long story short, my son chose to decommit and sought recruitment elsewhere and chose a JUCO over other offers.

Since he had been playing year round in Florida, he was known, so if his leg healed as anticipated, most programs were still interested in him.

He had to stay off his leg completely for 10 weeks as he broke his condyle. He worked very hard to get his strength up again and was able to play ball by Summer, which he did to get his skills back up before he reported to his JUCO in the fall.

It is amazing what happens to a leg over that time, be prepared for hard training to get it back in shape. My son went to a speed and strength coach who trained olympic and professional athletes.

Best of luck to your son, and you must be forthright. (I know that sounds odd after breaking a LOI).

And yes, I agree with all above, have your son make the call when he is able.

I think I generally agree with the above advice of having your son make the call.  But I can see the other way too...that is you or your husband making the call.  IMO, do what feels 'right' to you which may be different for different schools?

With one of our sons, my wife had a very good relationship with a particular coach and because of that they had some very insightful conversations about what was best for our son.  Thinking back, I wouldn't change a thing about those interactions.

My son was very severely injured at a showcase in August of his senior year.  Some coaches cared and some didn't.  A few wanted to delay a potential offer to the spring to make sure everything healed.  We told everyone about the injury but we were very selective about discussing surgery.  In every case I can think of we proactively told coaches (that didn't already know) that he had been injured and the nature of the injury.  However, we only talked about surgery if we were specifically asked.  I say "we" in this case because in a few instances a coach pulled me or my wife aside to ask about the injury without asking our son.  The school that my son eventually committed to was present when the injury took place but that coach never asked about surgery just about the prospects of a full recovery which were better than excellent.  I have my doubts if they would have offered if they knew about the operation but that is just conjecture.  They never asked.  

In the end my son threw so much harder AFTER surgery that he converted to pitcher and has had a great college career.  So, everything works out in the end.  The injury turned out to be a lucky break in sad and stressful way.  Hang in there.

To answer the posters question directly, in our case the three of us split up the communication.  Where the parent had a good relationship with the coach, the parent emailed the coach to explain what happened.  In cases where only my son knew the coach he waited a few days for all the meds to wear off before he called.  Post-surgery discomfort and meds took a few days longer than expected, so we got a little antsy about communication.  That was dumb.  Coaches were very understanding, they told us they were used to dealing with these kinds of problems during the process.  However, it did change the recruiting matrix for several schools.

2014Parent,

Yes, I think your son should call the coaches when he is able.  If he is not able to respond before any imposed deadlines, I think that is different situation.  Then you (parent) makes the call explaining the situation.

I recall having a similar offline discussion with another poster last year about their son's injury during the recruiting process.  leftyshortstop reminded me of that dialogue with his words and phrases. 

First of all, I hope your son has a quick physical and mental recovery.   Getting back on the baseball field may be the furthest thing from your mind right now.   Everybody on this message board can empathize with your situation.  Where I'm going with this is that I'd try to use this situation as a filter to find out who (coaches) is truly interested in your son.  If they were truly interested in your son's well being and health there should be something beyond some surface questions and dialogue.  As parent's, our first instinct is to protect our kids and get them healthy asap.  Your son's situation is fairly unique at this point on the recruiting calendar, and I'd like to suggest it is a way for him and you to find out who is really interested in him as a human being.  The feedback I received from last years offline discussion with another poster was exactly that.  It can be a way to separate those very interested programs from casually interested.   JMO.

2014Parent-first of all, so sorry to hear about your son's injury. This is rotten timing, I know. Hopefully the "pending" offers will be firm, even without his playing in front of them this fall. Not sure if fenway was referring to my son's situation last year, since he did talk me down from a panic state after son suffered a fairly traumatic injury requiring surgery last year (May of 11th grade h.s. season) right in the thick of the recruiting process. We did as he suggested, which is, have son email all the coaches of interest and let them know about the injury (including the possibility of surgery) and ask if this changed their level of interest in him as a prospective player. Fortunately, it was an injury with a very straight forward recovery, kind of like your son's broken leg, and we were reassured by several coaches that they had players on their current rosters who had come back from the injury and were doing just fine, and that their interest was unchanged. These are the coaches I really appreciated. A couple of schools that were acting very interested prior to the injury completely disappeared off the radar after he got hurt. In retrospect, one of them was one he would have been very tempted by, and I am SO GLAD he never was "tempted" by them, since he is now at his dream school. You never know...it could be a blessing in disguise.

Thanks to everybody for the advice and all of the well wishes.  We have been amazed at just how wonderful the coaches have been after some of the scary stories that you hear about...  The two D2 coaches who had already offered our son stood by their offers and told him that they want him and are still waiting for his answer.  The top 10 D3 coach who had not told him they officially wanted him (he was scheduled for an overnight with the team next week) told him that they want him and would offer money if it were possible.  He still needs to call a D1 coach who was planning to watch him during the Fall Classic one more time, but this went so much better than we expected.  My son's teammates and their parents have been incredibly supportive.  I am awed by how wonderful everybody has been!

That's great news!  I hope his recovery goes just as well.