College Volleyball Recruiting Time Frame and Communication

Hi. I will be a senior in high school this Fall 2011. I have been in contact with about 6 college coaches from schools that I am interested in. I sent out my game tape to them about 10 days ago and have not had any replies. I will be going into my 4th season of club ball and am only really looking at D3 schools.


Should I reconnect by email as a follow up to see if they received my tape? I am very nervous that maybe they are not interested and that's why they haven't replied. I have been seen by other college coaches at showcases and club tournaments that have shown an interest. I am not sure if they are just busy with their preseason starting soon or they are sending me a message that they are not interested.


Any advice would be great. Thanks - V.B.






All College Volleyball coaches have started their seasons within the last week.  Because of this, we are rather fried with things on campus and recruiting, especially, recruiting communication takes a back seat now.


While you may be feeling unsure, I would not put too much weight on things being 'quiet' right now, even with you sending in your tape. Give it until later next week, then shoot out a few emails to coaches as a follow-up to your tape.
Be patient with the recruiting process because the current College Volleyball season will monopolize coach's attention and many of us won't seriously look at the recruiting obligations until after the season has ended.  We will be playing catch up in the recruiting process because of all the season start details and unforeseen things which pop up.  As college coaches get deeper into the season and the season gains a certain rhythm, then we will start to focus more on the recruiting needs of the program.

I would like to take a moment and expand your question/concerns to those PSA's which are considering NCAA Division I schools.  The DI recruiting time frame seems to keep speeding up and as this accelerates, so does the misconceptions.  It seems like a century ago, that PSA's used to wait to make a verbal commitment until right before the November signing date of their senior year, and this was after taking a number of Official Visits.

In today's recruiting universe, freshman are committing, sophomores are the shiniest apple of the shelf, juniors are panicking and seniors are on medication because of the stress.  While this is the picture, it is not completely or even statistically accurate.  Yes, there are more players committing to scholarship offers at earlier time frames, but numerous quality scholarship opportunities are presented to the senior class.

There is a huge chasm between those power conference programs which are fully staffed with directors of operations and secretaries, and everyone else in College Volleyball.  The big time programs have the luxury of recruiting 24/7, along with sending coaches out on the road to watch high school matches at any time.  These instances are the great exception, not the norm and I caution VolleyFamilies to not get swept into this mentality if they don't have the physicality to match (I am rather proud of how that line came out!).

For the elite level athlete, and this is the PSA who has the physical tools to play within the Top 50 programs, the family needs to be aware of current protocols of these programs so they can best digest the information to support the quality choice of their PSA. 

As for the vast majority of PSA's outside of this group, we have the luxury of slowing down, taking our time to let our subconscious speak to us about the recruiting process, and ultimately have a better collegiate experience.  Because of the prevalence of the One and Done, I would venture to say that too many athletes in the Top 50 programs (and those next 25 scratching to get into this group) live in a precarious position of having their scholarships not renewed.  I know this is a sweeping statement, and I don't want to infer this is the standard, but I would be comfortable saying that more scholarship non-renewals happen within the elite group for lack of talent than outside of the elite group. 

If you are a VolleyFamily outside of this elite level group, please slow down and make an effort to work through everything which you are presented, while not getting caught up in the current of recruiting.  I say this because too many of us college coaches do get caught in the current, and have a tendency to drag the PSA's into our slipstream.