NY Times on a movement begun by women's lacrosse and softball coaches to end the early commitment craze. Sounds like they have some momentum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12...softball.html?src=me
Recruiting advices from D3 Sports on how and why HS athletes should "develop their brand" to market themselves to college coaches.
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The times has run this article several times over the past few years. The problem with female athletes is they physically mature sooner. It cranks up the recruiting race even worse then boys sports. My daughter verballed after soph year of high school. It's not uncommon for the best female athletes to be committing after 8th grade now.
How many kids know what they would like their potential career and college major to be in 8th grade. It was fortunate my daughter knew by the end of soph year. A lot of kids don't have a clue heading into senior year. As Roothog's son once said, "I'm 15. I don't even know what I want for lunch."
i believe the NCAA should prohibit any kind of contact until junior year. Allow NLIs to be signed junior year. The kids are called student-athletes for a reason. Given them the time/opportunity to figure out the student side of the decision.
My response here is for the benefit of those parents that will read something like the "personal branding" piece and think that they have yet another responsibility to lay at the feet of their 15-18 year old athlete. And my belief is that creating a personal brand is not at all important to successfully navigating recruiting.
The idea of creating a personal brand is definitely current. But for college sports recruiting, this is over the top advice. Although a personal brand helps market who you are, it will never suffice to market how you play. And in the end, the recruiting process breaks on decisions about whether a recruit's play works for the college program that's doing the recruiting. And they will almost always make that determination after seeing a recruit play.
Player as personal brand might make sense in a highly competitive recruiting environment where the recruiter has a choice of more than one equally talented players. Then things like character and personal mission will supply information on whether one or the other recruit is a "fit" for their program.
And one last anecdotal thing: my son rose to the basic requirements of communicating with coaches, but it didn't come easily or naturally. Adding a layer of responsibility ("hey kid, brand yourself") to the things he was already doing (hitting, lifting, running, throwing, homework) would have blown his mind. Some kids might be able to take that sort of process on, but my guess is that it would draw blank stares from most kids his age.
I think that's a good point. Sometimes though building the brand may be just a question of focusing on work to enhance one aspect of a player's skillset. For example, my kid's a speed guy who can bunt his way on and swipe a base, but his 60 time is medicore. It's taken a long time for him to realize that college coaches care more about his 60 time than his SB numbers on Max Preps.
JCG posted:NY Times on a movement begun by women's lacrosse and softball coaches to end the early commitment craze. Sounds like they have some momentum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12...softball.html?src=me
Recruiting advices from D3 Sports on how and why HS athletes should "develop their brand" to market themselves to college coaches.
Appreciate the links. Because we've been early in this process with my 2018, I'm sensing a bit of branding being developed. Few key points in the article. It would be nice if the recruiting process started later; it's a challenge to maintain family time on the calendar. Focusing on the important things, one step at a time.
