Sydney Supple is one of the Top 10 prospects in the 2019 class and has dominated individually and as part of the Beverly Bandits organization where she won a PGF National Championship in 2016.
Syd was the Wisconsin Gatorade Player of the Year in 2017 as she led her Oshkosh North High team to the state playoffs for the second year in a row with her pitching prowess and her strong bat, but it’s fiery passion and great work ethic that garnered her tons of top college interest before she committed to Northwestern in the 8th grade.
In her latest blog for Extra Inning Softball, the elite pitcher/infielder speaks from a unique vantage point about the new recruiting rules as she committed in the 8th grade and saw up-close the good and bad of where recruiting was headed—here’s what she has to say…
*****
April 25th—the first day that coaches and prospective recruits could no longer talk recruiting until September 1 of their junior year— brought the end to an era of early commitments.
The end of lifelong decisions about where kids will be getting their degrees were made, before they even began taking their high school or, in some cases just started, their middle school classes.
It was a spiraling effect over the last few years that progressively got earlier and earlier.
I truly feel it was not what any college coach wanted, but the competitiveness of locking in the top players in the country before anyone else locked them in threw all other options out of the park.
As a player that went through this and I admit: I would truly not change a single thing about my recruiting process.
I was blessed to have started getting recruited in the 7th grade, traveling the country to visit various beautiful campuses and meeting some prestigious coaches and players.
My committing to Northwestern in the 8th grade was, I admit, an early recruiting decision but came after I made 15 visits to campuses and put hours of research into it.
Over three years later I am fortunate that nothing has changed in my mind and, if anything, I have fallen more in love with my decision to go to Northwestern.
However, I realize that is not the case for all who committed early. Over the course of the early recruiting dilemma I have seen coaches leave programs, players change schools, and relationships between prospects and the coaches that recruiting them that just grew apart.
