2017 College Volleyball Scholarship Offer

Hello Coach,

     First, let me say that I love the blog and all the other questions hat are posed and answered on the blog.  Now to the question.  My daughter has an offer from a local DII school in our area.  It’s a good school academically. Athletically the program is ranked second regionally and sixteenth nationally.  It is a good fit for her and she likes everything about the school.  We have an offer from them and it’s good, of course it is not full but still good.  

Now my daughter is a great athlete, but 5’11” which I understand where that puts her in the big picture of D1 schools along with every other girl that is at that height.  We have had  D1 interest and she is holding back a bit to see what D1 offers may come along if any.  Is that a smart option? The great thing is that our DII school has advised her that she is their top recruit for 2017 and they have given us until February to give them an answer.  Should we take the offer?  Should we just verbally commit? 

I am not a fan of that option because I think that it would be unfair to the program to verbally commit only to change your mind when something else comes along.  I could be wrong by that is character and I feel it’s important attribute to have.  Your thoughts would be great.  Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,
B.G.


Thank you for the compliments of the website and happy to know the information has been a good resource.

I sounds as if there is some doubt in accepting the DII offer and doubt means don't.  

As I have written about on collegevolleyballcoach.com and Inside College Volleyball, the mid November to mid January is the crazy season of college volleyball and recruiting.  Many families will have a recruiting panic attack, especially if they are Seniors; they have finished their last season of high school volleyball and get mighty anxious about the next step.

Additionally, there are significant changes coming to the collegiate rosters and college coaching jobs.  Not only are college coaches updating their rosters by cutting players, but the Athletic Departments are cutting coaches, which leads to another round of new coaches cutting their rosters.  All of this results in many opportunities for January, which cannot be seen today.

With your daughter being a 2017, she still has time on the recruiting clock.  The Junior year club season is an important one, with the afore mentioned opportunities being presented.  Since she is 5'11", she will be in the mix, just in the middle of the mix.  This necessitates a big outreach by the family to put her in the position to be evaluated/recruited.  Even if you have written "all" the schools she is interested in, re-write them again because of the upcoming roster and coaching changes.  The email response you received last month from a program that said no, may well say, send me a video today.

Back to the current offer from the DII program.  If you daughter loves the school (location, academics, size, social life), would go there over any other school if they did not have volleyball and it is affordable for the family, then accept and enjoy your good recruiting fortune.  If there is any doubt, then get back into the active outreach of recruiting to prepare for the many, many opportunities which are coming in the winter/spring of club season!

Good luck!

Coach