What happens if the school you want to go to doesn't make an offer, but you still plan on enrolling and trying to make the team? Will tryouts be announced? What will he miss not having an offer?
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What level school?
@BB and BB posted:What will he miss not having an offer?
Being on the team
big difference between Preferred walk on and walk on..
preferred walk on : you are on the teams fall roster and usually participating in everything baseball related.. till end of oct /early nov and then...?
walk on-: .0000000375 chance of being on the team. but there is always a chance..
D2
Did the coach tell him to try to walk on? If so, you would think he would tell the player when walk on tryouts start.
There’s probably a good chance they recruited more players than they need in the first place. Then there are the players told to try to walk on. Then there’s your son.
A friend’s son thought he had a good shot of walking on at a mid major. One assistant appeared for walk on tryouts. They threw for fifteen minutes and were excused. They were told there weren’t any roster spots available. NCAA rules require teams to run walk on tryouts even if they’re phony.
Unnecessary snarkiness.
I think the level of the school division and exactly why no offer was given matters greatly. There are NAIA, lower tier JUCOs/D3s where I suspect it is very easy to walk on. At some of these schools if your son doesn't mind being on a 50-60 person roster with a JV team, he might be able to get a roster spot.
I know at my 2023's D2 (mid tier), one of his old teammates who was an OK player tried to walk on. At the tryout day, he ran a 6.7 60 and hit pretty well... Absolutely no one made the team. Pretty much any competitive baseball program is the same.
That said, I do think if 2023 had decommitted for some reason and went to a D3 instead, he probably would have gotten a roster spot at a fair number of D3s as a walk-on. But if he wrote the coach and all that jazz in advance, it probably would have been a "preferred' walk on spot.
@BB and BB posted:What happens if the school you want to go to doesn't make an offer, but you still plan on enrolling and trying to make the team? Will tryouts be announced? What will he miss not having an offer?
Announced is the key word. My son and I were at a D1 public "Ivy" in Virginia 10+ years or so ago sitting in the HC's office listening to their pitch & offer. The recruiting coach mentioned they hold "try-outs" every year but are purposefully awful at announcing details. Based on that conversation, it appears to be a check-the-box activity they do every year with little intention of actually doing anything or looking at anyone. With that said, I think you have to hard-sell the Coaches on your skills & abilities to be considered....request actual confirmation from the coaches they will look at you. From their viewpoint, they passed on you already for whatever reason. Why are they going to question their initial decision?
An offer is an opportunity to make the Varsity team, practice, workouts, nutrition, instruction, and try to crack the starting lineup. It is everything from a college baseball perspective.
While you are chasing down the tryouts, you may want to look into the college's club baseball team.
Good luck!
D2s have no roster limits, they can take on as many players as they want. How many players does this team usually carry? You can easily check past rosters to see this, and also to see how many juco and other transfers they have. If you've been in communication with the coach and he was not interested, I would not expect much from a tryout.
One way to use the term "walk-on" is to refer to a player who is not getting athletic money. If the next Bryce Harper has a full academic scholarship and doesn't need athletic money, he is a "walk-on". But he has been heavily recruited. That is often what the term "preferred walk-on" means, someone who has been recruited and been assured of a spot on the team - at least in the fall. They are probably given housing with other team members and treated like a member of the team. This site is full of stories of players who thought they were "preferred walk-ons" and then were cut after the fall.
A true walk-on, i.e. someone who just shows up at a tryout in the fall, is something else. unlikely at any level, but more likely at levels with no roster limits.
I am assuming the decision to go to school there despite not having received an offer to play baseball is purely an academic reason / desire to matriculate at that particular school more than just finding a school to play ball at.
I would attempt to contact the athletic department and find out when walkon tryouts are.
D3's honestly recruit up until the day the roster is set, so it's definitely possible there, not sure d3 have an actual tryout or if they just join the fall squad and get evaluated to make the spring roster..
Your son can try to contact the coach and explain he has been accepted and plans to matriculate there regardless; and that he would like to know about walkon tryouts.
For D1's
True Walkon tryouts I imagine now days are simply a formality and unless they see a pitcher throwing mid 90's, a Lefty nobody can hit his slider or a position player that looks like Superman and runs like the Flash vs everyone else, nobody is really getting paid attention to.
As a former D1 walkon (35 years ago) who spent 2 years of eligibility playing in the Fall, I wish it were different. I believe you should be a student first and ballplayer second. If it were up to me I'd make the NCAA form teams strictly from their student body and everyone who makes it gets a percentage of their tuition adjusted. (I know how silly that sounds, but it would be nice to see college baseball back to actual "amateur" status and throw a big "" at what the travel ball industry has become).
just my opinion.
I played one year of JuCo before moving on to A&M. The school is now known as Coastal Bend College but back then it was Bee County College. It is located in south Texas, about an hour north of Corpus Christie. Most of the baseball players knew each other before we got to campus from being at the same tryout camps over the prior year. Back then MLB teams held tryouts that were basically the precursor of today’s showcase industry. Except that most of them required an invitation from the team to attend. Many of us had attended a Montreal Expo tryout camp at Blinn College and got to know each other there. I, and a couple of teammates, got scholarships as a result of attending that camp. Anyway, that is the backstory. On the first day of school a handful of us were standing outside the ballpark talking and I guy that we didn’t know walked up and introduced himself as “Junior” from Corpus. We knew who all the scholarship guys were, and nobody knew this guy, so someone asked Junior if he was a walk on. He replied, “Naw, man. i drove my car.” From that point on he was Junior the Drive On. Junior didn’t survive the first cut but the story has lived a long life.
When I got to A&M they had an open tryout for walk ons. Our HC (Tom Chandler) referred to the walk on tryout participants as “the amazings.” Because it was amazing how bad they were at playing baseball. Nearly 200 players tried out and most of them were completely unknown to the coaching staff. They just blindly showed up at the tryout. With so many kids involved it was next to impossible to stand out unless you did something that nobody could miss. Like throw 95 mph. Surprisingly there were two guys there that did. Those two guys made the team and both were awarded scholarships. One of them was drafted by the Astros and made it to AAA ball. The other one was me.
Son's travel team was invited to tour UVA's club house. What was pointed out was that one locker was vacant for a potential walk-on. (True? who knows). (This is before the portal-as-we-know-it-now and before they won the CWS). One year, UVA had the misfortune to loose several players due to injury and had to tap their club team for players. No joke. That is how good their club team was. Moral of my story: 1) contact the coach about when/where/time the open try outs are and show up. You never know. 2) Many club teams are VERY good.
As @PitchingFan knows, my son's MiLB roommate in high A and AA was a 4 year walk on at TN. It's not the most conventional or comfortable route but there is precedent.
I've said it here before, but my oldest was a "preferred" walk on at UTA (ie, basically every perk except any scholarship). After 4 full years he had earned the equivalent of 37% of tuition and 25% of all other expenses. Junior year he had 0 in order to help the team out, and as a Senior he got 100% (which we got in writing as a Junior).
@russinfortworth posted:I've said it here before, but my oldest was a "preferred" walk on at UTA (ie, basically every perk except any scholarship). After 4 full years he had earned the equivalent of 37% of tuition and 25% of all other expenses. Junior year he had 0 in order to help the team out, and as a Senior he got 100% (which we got in writing as a Junior).
If your son was at UTA when Fuller Smith was part of the coaching staff please send me a PM with your thoughts about him.
A walk Pitcher made the team at Bradley (Missouri Valley Conference) for this past season. I think that it is very important to have as much knowledge on the program as possible before trying to walk on. Bradley Instagram
My kid's HS had a kid who was cut from the baseball team then walked on for a NE P5 school and became team captain. He is currently in the minors.
@RJM posted:NCAA rules require teams to run walk on tryouts even if they’re phony.
I know this post is from a couple of weeks ago (shows how long it's been since I've visited) but wanted to clarify that there is no NCAA rule that requires teams to offer walk-on tryouts. Some coaches or athletic departments may have their own such policy, but there is no such requirement issued by the NCAA.
I spoke yesterday to the mother of a recent high school grad who admitted that their son was "late to the recruiting party" (in this case, the sport was lacrosse). He has been trying to catch on with a D1 program and she told me that one coach recently told him "our roster is full for this year, but you can join us as a student manager."
As some of you may know, D1 has had a rule since 2014 that a baseball player who serves as a student manager "shall forfeit any remaining eligibility in the sport at that institution."
That rule has applied ONLY to the sport of D1 baseball. However, as of July 1, that rule now applies to ANY sport at the D1 level. Be sure to share with any families you may know who have been told this. In the case of that D1 lacrosse coach, he was either unaware of the new rule or worse.
@Rick at Informed Athlete posted:I know this post is from a couple of weeks ago (shows how long it's been since I've visited) but wanted to clarify that there is no NCAA rule that requires teams to offer walk-on tryouts. Some coaches or athletic departments may have their own such policy, but there is no such requirement issued by the NCAA.
The person who told me this explained it was what his son told him when he tried to walk on to a CAA program in about 2009. The one coach who showed up told them it was a rule but they didn’t need any players. Maybe it used to be a rul or it was school policy. But, thank you for clearing it up for others.