By Bryce PericaOur third installment in a series geared towards high school recruits and their parents includes more information from coaches about visiting campus, whether to bring your parents along, and the temptations recruits face when they spend a weekend on campus.
Depending on where a potential student-athlete (PSA) visits, the highlight could be a D-I football game, attending a class in the PSA’s academic field of interest, or a walk around campus with the coach and the PSA’s parents. The free hours of an official visit are often determined by the PSA’s academic passions and the must-do activity in the area, according to those who know it the best, the coach and the team.
Not surprisingly, at Michigan State most visits are structured around a football game. However, just because a PSA will likely attend a game on Saturday, Friday will be loaded “up with academic meetings,” wrote Head Coach Matt Gianiodis. Most schools follow this pattern; a strong academic focus on Friday, with Saturday planned around enjoying what the college and the surrounding area has to offer.
On most of my visits I was handed an hour-by-hour schedule of the next 48 hours I would be on campus. Not all schools do this for recruits. At Boston College, Head Coach Tom Groden does not have a strict itinerary. “The PSA comes in and becomes one of the kids’ friends for the weekend,” Groden wrote. “The idea is to just see what college life is like.”
With that in mind, how does a recruit get to experience college life if the parents come along? We asked coaches precisely that. Most coaches who responded to us said there are advantages to having the parents along and that the PSA always gets some time with the team. “I typically like to include the parents on the campus tour and meeting with me,” wrote Paul Dotterweich, Head Coach at SUNY Geneseo. “If possible I try to schedule a little time to meet with parents without the athlete. You can obtain valuable information in that session.”
Bob Goldberg, Head Coach at UCONN, agrees that bringing parents along on a visit is a boon. “It shows an important involvement. I see only benefits, not drawbacks,” Goldberg said. However, there are coaches who express a reluctance to have the parents there for the whole weekend because parents are not going to be there when the freshmen arrive in the fall. An important point to remember is to view the recruiting visit as an opportunity to experience the freedom and independence that comes with the college life, but there are benefits and drawbacks to this too.
Most notorious among the temptations a recruit will face on a visit, is the consumption of alcohol. All of the coaches we heard from stressed strict anti-drinking policies for recruits and current athletes. That said, coaches are in touch with reality and they do know that they cannot police a recruit and his or her host during every minute of a visit. “Drinking happens on every college campus, even those top non-party schools,” wrote John Patnott, Head Coach at Hope College. “But that does not excuse its use. All prospects are minors and it is illegal. We try to emphasize that.”
If a recruit thinks that he or she can get away with drinking during a campus visit they should heed the cautionary tales we received from coaches. Even though coaches make the effort to place a recruit with a host who has a great reputation and is unlikely to take the recruit to a party where drinking is taking place, it can happen. When it does, things can get very ugly. At one college, a recruit who had already committed to the school he was visiting was insistent on tracking down and consuming mass quantities of alcohol. This resulted in his acceptance being revoked.
At another school, a recruit spent his first night in the hospital because of excessive drinking. The parents were called in at 2 a.m. and, not surprisingly, the recruit and his/her parents were not convinced this was the right place to attend in the fall.
There are also horror stories about visits during which the recruit is not to blame, but the host is. What is a recruit to do if a host and his girlfriend get in a heated fight and leave the recruit downtown? Well, in nearly 100% of those cases, the recruit is not going to choose that college. These stories aside, the majority of visits are in line with the expectations set by the coaching staff and the conduct agreements current athletes have signed.
If there are illegal activities during a visit, a PSA should not feel obligated to participate. Calling their parents (if they are in town) or a coach is recommended. A swimming team is going to become family, so if a recruit does not socially, academically, and culturally identify with some potential teammates, then he or she should consider another college where they can feel comfortable in a variety of settings, where they can become a family member for the next four years.
