My DD is going to a high academic school in the Centennial Conference. She played on a regional team based in the mid-Atlantic. Been to plenty of good, well-known east coast tournaments, but never played west of the Mississippi River.
The most important thing for getting recruited at a high academic school is your daughter’s course load, grades, and test scores. Softball has the potential to help, but schools like C-M aren’t going to recruit people that don’t academically fit there. This is obvious, but I think it can get lost in all the softball recruitment madness. The stronger she is academically, the more options she will have.
I think playing on a regional travel ball team based where your daughter wants to go to school and that plays competitive tournaments in that region is plenty. Joining a better known program from that region (e.g., PA Chaos, NJ Intensity, Empire State Huskies, etc. if the NE) might be advantageous. You can play for a national team and a national schedule if your DD is capable and wants to, but you can easily burn through a chunk of your college tuition doing so. Also not sure if the coaches you might want to play for are going to those national tournaments in CA, CO, etc. Some might, many won’t or can’t. If you play good tournaments in their backyard (e.g., Pennsbury), they are likely to be there. I’ve been to plenty of tournaments in the south where literally ZERO of the schools we were interested in showed up. We took one for the team, so to speak, but I always said to myself, WTF are we doing here, to the tune of a couple thousand dollars for the week.
More important than the showcase tournaments in our experience is building relationships with coaches at those schools that you are interested in and going to camps they host during the fall and winter. This is the most bang for your buck in softball recruitment, in my opinion. The coaches will definitely see you at these camps. It will also get the coach out to see you at the showcase events.
Now being on the other side of it, I have a theory, at least as it involves higher academic schools. For every Tufts, there are many other high academic schools with perhaps less competitive or ambitious softball programs that struggle to recruit players, let alone higher level players. Not only is it challenging to get into the school academically, it turns out that it is not that easy to get girls and their families to commit to paying tuition at a high academic school where the only aid may be needs-based (that is, no athletic money or even “merit scholarships”). The sticker price for all these small, private, high-academic schools is $75-85K/year. Many of these schools and coaches need you as much or more than you need them. It never feels that way going through it, but I am increasingly convinced it is true.
The most important thing for getting recruited at a high academic school is your daughter’s course load, grades, and test scores. Softball has the potential to help, but schools like C-M aren’t going to recruit people that don’t academically fit there. This is obvious, but I think it can get lost in all the softball recruitment madness. The stronger she is academically, the more options she will have.
I think playing on a regional travel ball team based where your daughter wants to go to school and that plays competitive tournaments in that region is plenty. Joining a better known program from that region (e.g., PA Chaos, NJ Intensity, Empire State Huskies, etc. if the NE) might be advantageous. You can play for a national team and a national schedule if your DD is capable and wants to, but you can easily burn through a chunk of your college tuition doing so. Also not sure if the coaches you might want to play for are going to those national tournaments in CA, CO, etc. Some might, many won’t or can’t. If you play good tournaments in their backyard (e.g., Pennsbury), they are likely to be there. I’ve been to plenty of tournaments in the south where literally ZERO of the schools we were interested in showed up. We took one for the team, so to speak, but I always said to myself, WTF are we doing here, to the tune of a couple thousand dollars for the week.
More important than the showcase tournaments in our experience is building relationships with coaches at those schools that you are interested in and going to camps they host during the fall and winter. This is the most bang for your buck in softball recruitment, in my opinion. The coaches will definitely see you at these camps. It will also get the coach out to see you at the showcase events.
Now being on the other side of it, I have a theory, at least as it involves higher academic schools. For every Tufts, there are many other high academic schools with perhaps less competitive or ambitious softball programs that struggle to recruit players, let alone higher level players. Not only is it challenging to get into the school academically, it turns out that it is not that easy to get girls and their families to commit to paying tuition at a high academic school where the only aid may be needs-based (that is, no athletic money or even “merit scholarships”). The sticker price for all these small, private, high-academic schools is $75-85K/year. Many of these schools and coaches need you as much or more than you need them. It never feels that way going through it, but I am increasingly convinced it is true.
