Any other good advice and/or tips from parents who have been through the recruiting process? All, is Greatly appreciated by us first timers.
I would suggest keeping very detailed notes of everything discussed with coaches. And every single coach will ask your daughter if she has any questions, have a canned list of at least a dozen ready to go. "Uhm" or "NO" is not an acceptable answer. Prep your daughter on how to handle these calls prior to answering them. Have a calendar ready and if it is a college of interest, book the visit date, whether it is the coach coming to do a home visit or you going to campus and follow up with details later. Keep all doors and options open until you have other better options and offers in your hand, even if your dream school calls, you most likely will still need a visit with the coach to get an offer, so you never know. My daughter had a lot of phone calls starting exactly at midnight, the coaches want to express interest, get you pumped on their program, but are also in a bit of a hurry to make other calls. Call waiting beeps should be ignored, but that is stressful too, but they will continue to call back until they reach you. We were up to about 4-5:00AM taking calls, then it died down til about 7:30AM then got busy again. The next two days were mostly follow up calls and making arrangements. Most coaches send an email exactly at midnight if they are interested and call ASAP. A set time for a phone meeting can be set up by responding to the emails, that seemed the easiest way as your daughter may be taking other calls and the coaches may be making other calls.
This is fabulous advice. My bit to add is to have your daughter ask the coach how many 23s they are planning on recruiting for the class (i.e. 6 kids) and where she stands on their list. Prep her and make sure she asks bc that information is very helpful to know. Some coaches will not be straight up,but others will. If your daughter's dream school calls-it doesn't bode well if she tells them or any bid dogs who are interested that she's just going through the process. You have to let the schools you are interested in that you are very interested in them. If your daughter doesn't communicate that-they may just move on. ENJOY this time!! A coach told me that and I thought they were crazy-it's definitely stressful-but folks-this is it-this is what your daughter has put so much time and hard work for and you've shelled out lots of money for. Enjoy those official visits (Unofficials are fun, too). Enjoy being wanted. There's a great fit out there for every girl.
