Parents role?

Early on, I think it's desirable for parents to help with information, editing, and organization; so long as it's the player who takes the parent's assistance and does the legwork. As you've suggested, this means that they send out the emails, handle the questionnaires, do their own talking with coaches, etc. 

The recruiting process, itself, can be a wonderfully maturing exercise if players are given the responsibility and latitude to assume more and more accountability for carrying it out. Certainly by the time a player reaches the summer following his Junior year in high school, he should be both pulling and steering his recruiting process.

As I and others here have written often, playing baseball in college is an extremely demanding task; one that requires initiative, diligence, and accountability. All three can and should be exercised in increasing amounts as a player matures along with his recruiting process.

I coached, helped strategize and cheerleaded. Occasionally I kicked him in the tail. I tried to remember the recruiting process is a job and he already had plenty of other academic and athletic responsibilities plus a part time job.

We sat down and made his target list together. We wrote the letters together. I advised him what the content of correspondence should be. But it had to come off like a literate high school kid, not an adult.

That's about how are experience went.  They one thing he always had that helped with the hunger to play at the next level.  That hunger kept me engaged.

Of course the parent(s) should be involved and active in the process.  A 16-year or 17-year old may be intelligent and mature but simply doesn't have the life experience to navigate the negotiating and courtship phase of recruiting.  As parents, we've had a lifetime experience of getting burned and this serves us well in helping our sons in this process.

These colleges have dealt with parents before.  Nothing to be shy or coy about in getting involved.  As long as the parent is respectful so as not to scare off the team you will find these coaches directly engaging with the parents at the game, by phone and by email. 

The way I look at it, right now he's mine.  When he steps foot on campus, he's yours.

"... we've had a lifetime experience of getting burned and this serves us well in helping our sons in this process."

I know what you mean, and this made me laugh, Bum ... because it's so true. 

But also because your sentence construction makes it sound like you're saying we gotta help our kids learn how get burned. HA! Maybe some of that, too!

I agree with RJM and Bum.  Our experience was a lot like RJM's.  You know your son better than anyone and he is still your child (even if he is 6inches taller).  It's great to guide them but only you know how much they need.  My findings where my son was way more ready for the process than I thought.

That correlation is so logical but so often missed.  Nicely put.

The whole process facilitated some great converstaions between my son and I.  I was able to throw in a few "business" lessons that will help him in any venture in life including baseball.  Like the importance of building relationships, follow-up communication, etc.  When he received his verbal offer from his top school, we even role-played his call back to the coach and was able to successfully negotiate a better offer.  Although he did need some pushing at times, I hope he learned some good things along the way!

My wife, son and I sat down to strategize and discuss goals.   We showed him what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.  He did it, and we coached him what he did well and what he didn't do well.   Rinse and repeat a hundred times until offers come in.   Consider offers in the context of academics, athletics and financial.  Select the one that works best based upon agreed upon goals. 

BTW...The skills he learned in college baseball recruiting have been applied every summer for engineering internships and full time employment after graduation.   I think he's got it!  

Once my son "committed" to being the best he can after 9th grade we had a family meeting and discussed going forward. we decided that he would be In control of how to proceed and that us the parents would advise each step of the way. this included making sure the correct gym routine was selected, the proper nutrition was consumed, narrowing down college choices was reasonable and helping him prepare mentally for the ups and downs that are surely to come. when the time comes to actually contacting schools he will write the letters and we will proof read them, when its time to attend camps and showcases we will all do our due diligence in investigating which ones off the best opportunity and we will all live with the decisions.

Remarkably one of the most important things I have done being someone who loves baseball was to sit his arse down and watch Ken Burn's baseball from start to finish. it is absolutely remarkable how his respect for the game changed soon after. I honestly saw a difference in how he played the game after that, it was no longer just a game, hard to put into words.

There are critical tasks for parents in the process.

The problem we are facing is that we live in the era of "helicopter parenting", and along with that comes the tendency of parents to try to handle EVERYTHING for the player, even when the parents are screwing it all up big time.  So the discussions here do tend to focus on the need to cut back tremendously on what the typical parents would otherwise do. 

Players should handle all discussions with coaches, whether it's their high school, travel ball or potential college coaches.  It's no answer to say they are not ready.  There comes a time when they have to be ready.  That can be when they are college freshmen, or it can be 1-2 years sooner.  Most of the reason why players don't do it (when they don't) is because parents wrongly assume the players are not capable, and they take over or try to stay in control.  In reality the players could do just fine if parents would cut the apron strings, stop enabling the lazy approach, and force the players to step up for themselves.  Most players actually find, once they get into it, that they enjoy feeling more empowered about their own futures.  And many parents are surprised to discover just how capable their young men are if they'll just step back and allow them to prove it.

Here are some things parents SHOULD be doing:

1.  Parents should counsel players about their collegiate choices.  For one thing, since baseball scholarships are partial, the player is almost certainly going to be relying on parents' money for his college years.  Any time the parents' checkbook is involved, the parents are involved.  Parents need to make sure the player knows, e.g., if private university costs are out of the question. 

Also, parents should make sure the player is looking at schools that are a good fit academically.  Some players are honor students, some are average/typical, and some may just barely qualify for NCAA play.  If you had three players, one in each of those categories, should they all be looking at the same schools?  Of course not.

Subject to these parameters, though, parents should allow the player to choose his own school. 

2.  Parents should coach their sons through the initial steps of the players' communications with coaches.  Players often do not fully appreciate the differences between talking to their HS buddies on the one hand, and talking to adult authority figures on the other.  This is more and more true in this era when fewer and fewer of these players have ever held paying jobs.  (While our generation had jobs, this generation has activities and is often pressured to devote more time to public service projects instead of paying work.)  Before a player hits "send" on an e-mail, a parent should review the note with him to assure it is written respectfully and also in a manner that conveys the maturity of the player.  Also it should be spelled, punctuated etc. correctly so that the coach isn't left wondering if you could really cut it in class at his college.

Do remember that this is a "training wheels" task, though, meaning that after the first few efforts, the parents have to back off and let the player do it himself.  Even when mistakes are made, mistakes are how we learn.  This notion that parents should be involved so as to prevent all mistakes is just plain wrong.  For one thing, it presupposes that parents never make mistakes, which of course is incorrect.  For another, it enables the player to remain forever pubescent in his approach to managing his own future, and that is counterproductive to just about every life goal you might have for your son.

Midlo,

GREAT instructional post!.  When I see a post like this, I wish there was a place here where some of the best go-to posts could be highlighted and easily referenced.  I know we have Golden Threads but sometimes it is just one post.

+1

Great post indeed Midlo Dad...

Looking in the rear view mirror I now see that encouraging our son to take point in the recruiting process was the best thing that ever happened to him. While he was a bulldog on the mound, at 16 YO when it came to interacting with adults he could be quite introverted.  The process brought out a dynamic in him that quite frankly I had not seen before.  

I'll admit that at first it was difficult for my wife and me to sit on the sidelines for much of recruiting process however as a parent the payoff for doing so was quite rewarding.  In a very short period of time he went from being a shy kid with great baseball skills to a young man that had more confidence in himself and more importantly had a much greater sense of what he wanted to do with his life.  If we had taken the lead and done things for him I don't know if we would have seen the same growth.  The end result was he left high school much better prepared to deal with real world issues and he hasn't looked back since.