I know some families who are almost going the complete other way and almost focusing entirely on prospect days of targeted schools and a showcase or two. Most of that crowd has the luxury of playing on high school teams which have some sort of cache to help get them into the semi-competitive showcases to broaden their exposure.
The other question is how much exposure?
14 and 15 year kids are not men, and I've seen it with my own son and they just can't always flip that switch and perform. That's what kids do. We were at a big tournament in Maryland this fall and had quite a few coaches watching the 2017 team. So many in fact that we were all really surprised.
Over the course of six games if you had seen my kid in three of them you would have said where I can sign him up, two of them were, ok this kid is good we want to see more, and the other game you would have said wth is the big deal.
I think my son has had the opportunity to play with or against all but one of the early announced 2017 commits, and I would say the same thing about most or all of them., and that is the problem or dilemma as I see it with doing too many or even any of the prospect days as a 2017. We have been politely begging off since it requires us to do a lot of traveling.
Our approach has been to put together a really solid video from the fall, fortunately when coaches were watching his games this fall he played well enough to wet their appetite, and then try to be smart about his rising sophomore summer about how much he plays. It is just too hard for guys this age, with the rare exception, to just be on all of the time.
All it takes is one so so game in front of a target coach and you are done. Sometimes less is more, and while you have to play the exposure game it is a pretty tricky tight wire to walk sometimes.
Interesting post. My son's club coach has told him to stay away from the prospect camps as they are make or break situations.
