Earlier this summer, Blake Toppmeyer of the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune wrote an excellent article titled “Softball players making college choices before their first high school games” on the topic of early recruiting.

It is so well done that I reached out to Blake to get permission to run (thanks to his editor for granting this!). Blake covers Missouri Tigers’ sports so it will have a Mizzou perspective but this is such an impressively well-researched and written piece that I felt it is a must-read for the entire fastpitch audience.

***

Lauren Rice will begin taking driver’s-education courses in about six months, and one of her next major life decisions will be selecting her first car.

One might think the big decision after that would be choosing a college. But Rice decided that more than six months ago when, at 14 years old, she verbally accepted a scholarship offer to play softball for Missouri. She had yet to throw her first pitch of her freshman season for Morrison High School in Illinois.

Missouri wasn’t first on the scene, either. Rice already had scholarship offers from Illinois and Boston College, and other Division I schools were building interest.

“Mizzou had always been one of the places I wanted to go to,” Rice, now 15, said. “The campus is so nice, and the coaches and the girls, they made me feel at home. It was amazing.”

Rice is part of a national trend toward early recruiting in Division I softball.

Rice is one of 100 softball players in the 2017 graduating class who have given verbal commitments to Division I programs, according to GoldFastpich.com, a softball recruiting website. Twelve from the 2018 class, players who just finished eighth grade, are verbally committed, according to the website.

“It’s gotten crazy,” said Bill Conroy, who has coached travel-softball teams for 15 years. “I’m having kids take the ACT when they’re in eighth grade.”

Conroy is the director of the Chicago-based Beverly Bandits, a Premier Girls Fastpitch traveling program. Rice is in her second summer playing for one of the Bandits’ 14U teams.

Conroy is not alone in his distaste for early recruiting. But like others involved in the process, he believes there’s little he can do to reverse the trend because of the potential consequences of standing against it.

“Most coaches, I don’t care if they’re club coaches or collegiate coaches, they would all like to dial it back a bit,” said Rhonda Revelle, Nebraska’s softball coach and president of the National Fastpich Coaches Association. “But on the flip side, the competitive nature of the beast, unless we’re all dialing it back, they don’t want to fall behind, either. It’s this real catch-22.”

 

How it works

Under NCAA rules, a Division I softball coach cannot have off-campus contact with a recruit before July 1 following the player’s junior year of high school. Recruits cannot take official visits — college visits in which the college foots the bill — until they’ve started their senior year. Starting with the 2014-15 year, coaches will be able to phone prospects beginning Sept. 1 of their junior year. Previously, they could not call prospects before July 1 following their junior year.

There was a time when coaches and athletes largely followed the NCAA’s timeline. Catharine Aradi, who has been a recruiting consultant for high school softball players for 25 years and authored the book, “Preparing to Play Softball at the Collegiate Level,” described how the process used to work.

A player might write to college coaches during her junior year and take some unofficial visits. That might be followed by off-campus contact and home visits from college coaches starting July 1 after the prospect’s junior year, followed by the prospect making official visits as a senior. The athlete then might make her decision and sign a national letter of intent during the November signing period.

Those are the days of yore.

“I don’t know the last time I did a home visit,” Revelle said. “That used to be part of the deal, and I think that was a good part of the deal.”

There are 1,128 players verbally committed to Division I programs, according to GoldFastpitch.com, from the 2015-18 graduating classes. Those players have never had a home visit from a college coach. More than a third of those commits — 424 — will be juniors or younger when the next school year starts.

Coaches and athletes accelerate recruiting by using loopholes that don’t violate NCAA bylaws.

There is no NCAA rule to prohibit a college coach from offering an athlete a scholarship before the coach is allowed to have off-campus contact or initiate phone contact with a recruit. There’s also no rule preventing player-initiated phone calls to a college coach before coaches are allowed to call prospects. Prospects of any age can talk to coaches while on an unofficial visit as long as it’s not during a recruiting dead period.

Missouri Coach Ehren Earleywine said a seventh-grader took an unofficial visit to MU this spring. Missouri was the fifth school she visited, he said, and she had three scholarship offers.

“Seventh-graders are visiting at a pretty steady pace,” Earleywine said.

College coaches usually establish contact with a recruit with help from a travel-ball or high school coach. They might attend a prospect’s game and pass word to the coach that they would like to talk to that player if she would call them.

That’s how the process worked with Rice. Earleywine watched her play a game last October and arranged through her coach for Rice to call him. On Dec. 14, with MU’s coaches watching, Rice hit 70 mph — the equivalent of throwing 98 in baseball — on the radar gun during a prospect camp Missouri hosted. Earleywine offered her a full scholarship, Rice said. She accepted.

“It’s really difficult for families and kids to make those decisions that early,” said Larry Rice, Lauren’s father. … “If they don’t take those opportunities when they’re presented, I think a lot of parents, along with some of the kids, feel that they’re going to lose out.”

Larry Rice said he’s comfortable with his daughter committing to Missouri when she did. He views it as a commitment to attend and graduate from college while playing softball at a high-level program, all of which he’s in favor of his daughter doing.

“It wasn’t a death sentence,” he said. “We tried to keep it as positive as we can.”

Missouri’s incoming freshman pitcher Paige Lowary verbally committed early in her sophomore year at Dallas Center-Grimes High School in Iowa.

“It was a relief once she decided, but it feels like it was forever ago,” said Shelly Lowary, Paige Lowary’s mother. “She has changed so much, and so many things have happened. She’s stayed happy — very happy — with her decision, but I can’t imagine with some girls and some coaches that they wouldn’t have a change of heart.”

Commitments are nonbinding on both ends until an athlete signs a national letter of intent, accompanied by a financial-aid agreement. A player cannot sign an NLI until November of her senior year.

“I would never change my mind,” Rice said. “Once I make a verbal, I don’t want to change that commitment.”

 

How it evolved

About eight years ago, twins Tatum and Taylor Edwards were barely teenagers and on Revelle’s recruiting radar. She recalls Nebraska being the only college program at a 14U national tournament the twins played in. Revelle’s early recruiting efforts paid off. The Edwards twins finished their careers in May having led Nebraska to a 163-70 record the past four seasons and a Women’s College World Series appearance in 2013.

Not all elite prospects flourish in college the way the Edwards twins did. Plus, early recruiting that ties up scholarship money from power conference programs means late-bloomers are often left to be scooped up by mid-major programs, Revelle said.

“It’s hard to tell if who you’re recruiting at the age of 12 is who you’re going to get when they’re a freshman in college,” Conroy said.

College coaches’ actions indicate they believe the potential reward outweighs the risk. Revelle returned to the 14U national tournament the year after she watched the Edwards twins and recalls being joined by coaches from about eight or 10 other programs.

“Now, the 14-and-under national tournament is the boon,” said Revelle, who has coached Nebraska for 22 seasons. “It’s swarming. … I think we all kind of look at each other and go, ‘We’re crazy for being here.’ But yet, we’re still there.”

It’s led to coaches of top programs having their recruiting classes full a few years in advance. Earleywine said Missouri is on the slower end of the recruiting spectrum compared to similar programs, but he still acts quicker than he’d prefer.

Missouri has verbal commitments from four players who just finished their sophomore years, according to GoldFastpich.com, while Rice is MU’s lone commitment from the 2017 class. MU’s SEC counterpart Tennessee has three commitments from the 2017 class and three from the 2018 class, according to the website.

“I would be surprised if any of the top-50 programs have any slots even left in their 2016 class,” Revelle said.

Although early recruiting is widespread among power conference programs, Aradi estimates only about 15 percent of future college softball players verbally commit by midway through their junior year. Much of that can be attributed to the three-fourths of players who compete at the Division II, Division III or NAIA level and typically make their college decisions later in the process.

Recruiting does not move this quickly for all sports, especially some men’s sports. An analysis by the National Collegiate Scouting Association that the New York Times published in January showed only 5 percent of boys basketball players who used NCSA’s service and 4 percent of its football players committed before the official NCAA-outlined recruiting process begins.

Why the difference?

“The only thing I can think of … is that girls develop quicker physically,” Earleywine said.

 

Will it ever stop?

Earleywine doesn’t mince words about his feelings on the early recruiting trend.

“I hate it,” he said.

Aradi believes Earleywine and his colleagues are the ones with the power to stop it.

“If the college coaches weren’t looking to get commitments from freshmen and sophomores and even eighth-graders, the travel ball coaches would not have that expectation,” Aradi said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Aradi said the pressure to win that coaches at high-caliber Division I programs face is probably a big impetus for early recruiting.

“The whole system is kind of off-kilter,” she said. “Kids are being pushed to make decisions early without maybe being mature enough to do so. Parents are seeing the prospect of having it all locked down and potentially money, so they say, ‘Let’s do this.’ And the coach is feeling like, ‘If I don’t get this kid as a ninth-grader or a 10th-grader who is a 6-foot-tall pitcher, someone else is going to get her.’”

Travel programs have adapted. Conroy’s program began with only 18U and 16U teams. The Bandits now include 14U and 12U teams. They play games coast to coast. Conroy said he has players who have not decided where they will attend high school but have received college scholarship offers. Conroy often helps facilitate the recruiting talks.

“As long as they’re out there offering, I’ve got to fight for my kids,” Conroy said. “I have a stance, and I feel like I’m a hypocrite, but that money is going out to somebody. I have to fight for it to go to a deserving kid in my own program.”

Conroy, Earleywine and Revelle contend that the only way to pump the brakes on recruiting would be if the NCAA amended its bylaws.

Conroy suggested moving up when a player could sign an NLI. A binding agreement might cause both player and college coach to be more hesitant. Earleywine wishes the NCAA would prevent all contact between p rospects and college coaches before a player’s junior year. Revelle desires change but knows new NCAA legislation would only be as good as its ability to police it.

“Verbal commitments have been an area of concern for some of the NCAA’s membership since the commitments are not binding for either the prospective student-athlete or the school,” Michelle Hosick, an associate director for NCAA public and media relations, said in an email. “Both parties take a significant risk.”

To change the process, Division I conferences would need to sponsor a rule to be considered by the full membership and voted on by representatives from each conference, Hosick said. In 2011, NCAA members defeated a proposal that would have restricted coaches in all Division I sports from making a verbal scholarship offer until July 1 after a prospect’s junior year. New proposals are unlikely to be considered until the 2015-16 year, Hosick said.

For now, expect the race to gain early commitments to continue. Although Earleywine dislikes the process, he considers it better to recruit 14- and 15-year-olds than to let another SEC school snap them up first.

“You always feel like you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses,” Earleywine said.