We wouldn't have these discussions if early recruiting wasn't in the picture. Summer of their sohpmore year going into junior year is reasonable. Stop blaming the parents. It's the club teams and the division 1 lax coaches feeding the machine.
As a parent and NOT a club/college coach, i can tell you from an fairly unbiased perspective that blaming only the coaches is completely untrue. Many a college coach has had 8th grade kids and their parents show up in the lax office during the school year (i.e. before they are even into the summer before frosh yr) asking to talk to the coach, saying they want to consider committing to XXXX college.
At one of the top D3 programs (top both athletically and academically), last fall a group of 4 8th grade kids and their parents walked into the head coach's office asking about recruiting. Coach said it was all he could do to not tell the parents they were frikkin crazy, but instead nicely told them they didnt really start to evaluate kids until summer before Jr Yr. This was driven 100% by parents, as this school never has any commits until rising Jr summer, and any knowledgeable club coach would know that was the case.
While it is true that the root of much of the ER insanity is the coaches being willing to even consider rising Frosh (even if they are 15-16 yo), to not put some of the blame on the parents is being naive. Not that, given the recruiting landscape right now, the parents arent making rational decisions to pursue the gold ring as a Frosh.........if your kid is a stud (or a summer birthday holdback, and then also reclassed when he transferred to brunswick/Choate/ St. XXXXX), is 5'11+ in 8th grade, can shoot on the run, and has pretty good grades, but not good enough to get into a UMich/UVa/ND/JHU on grades alone, then maybe its not crazy. Why not spend 8 weekends during the summer-before and fall-of his Frosh yr to see if you can get him a free, semi-binding option to attend a great school like UMich/UVa/ND/JHU (that he probably wouldn't ever get to sniff at otherwise) simply because he can beat a bunch of year-younger middies off a split dodge........As a parent of a HS Sr (non athlete) who has a 3.8 and 32 ACT but is still probably not getting an acceptance from a UMich/UVa/ND/JHU, having a semi-binding option on one of them maybe isnt the worse thing in the world.
Now, the real head scratchers are the early commits to [insert second-tier D1 school of your choice that any student with a 3.0 and 26 ACT can get in to]. I guess if your son's goal in life is to be a D1 lax player, then knock yourself out.....I just hope its not actually just the parent's goal to be able to claim their son is committed to d1, otherwise its going to be a long 4 years for him in [insert crappy small city name here], and a tough few years living at home after college while in the Enterprise training program.
Crazy parents running around to schools trying to meet with the coach is not the same thing as being recruited. Sending out countless emails to college coaches is not being recruited. In this day and age their are tournaments that put hundreds of players in front of the college coaches. This past summer and fall just about every Head Coach from all of the top teams in the country were on the sideline watching the top 2019 club teams play.
The coaches watch and then they "recruit" who they like. You don't just call up Hopkins or Duke and say that you want to commit. The Coaches watch the player multiple times then they reach out to see if there is any interest from the player. What 14 year old and their parents will not explore Virginia, Cornell, Duke, Penn, Hopkins etc...
There may be crazy parents and Club and HS coaches might try to push a kid but at the end of the day the college coaches are in charge. They watch the games and they recruit the kids. They ask them to visit campus and they do their best to try and get to know the player and the family. If they think the kid will fit their program they make an offer.
