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Recruiting Roundup: Reaction to New Legislation, 50 Newly Added Commits and a TON of Recruit News!

Cheyenne Castille, Coach Rhonda Revelle of Nebraska and Dakota Carter.

With about 24 hours separating us from yesterday’s announcement that the NCAA had approved several changes regarding Early Recruiting, we now are starting to see some of the impact of those rulings.

For example, with the big change of no contacting by college coaches until Sept. 1 of the recruit’s junior year, we’re seeing a flurry of verbals coming in “under the gun,” which is not surprising.

We’re also starting to get club coaches and event directors providing feedback and we’ll start with two that are representative of the general feeling so far….

CLUB COACH REACTION:

Jay Roberson is a long-time coach in the Birmingham Thunderbolts organization and also runs the Bolts 5-Star Events among others.  He wrote Extra Inning Softball this morning saying:

“My phone has been ringing off the hook from our Bolts coaches and other travel coaches looking for advice regarding the new rule.  Below is a blanket email I sent to all of them…”

Coaches,

College coaches will continue to spend the majority of their time, for now, at the 14U fields.   They have none or very little money remaining to offer for kids in 16U.  A couple of years from now you will see them start to spend more time at 16U games.

This doesn’t mean they will stop going to watch 14U games, but it will be a little more balanced. Right now, I would say they spend 75% of their time at 14U games and that will continue for the next year or two because they don’t have any or very little money to offer 16U age kids.  Two years from now I see them starting to split their time between 14U and 16U evenly.  14U to evaluate and 16U to evaluate and offer.

Also, college coaches can still give travel coaches info on your kids they just can’t talk about offers.  They can tell you that they like a kid, what they think they need to work on, ask about their grades, etc…   They just can’t talk about anything involving an offer.

You can also still take an unofficial visit to a campus.   It just can’t be based on recruiting or an offer.   You can set up a campus tour and gather info on academics.  However, the days of the unofficial being based on softball and meeting with the coaching staff at end of visit is over unless you are a junior.

Do not put college coaches in a bad situation by trying to get them to talk to you about offering a kid that is younger than a Junior.   They will be watched very closely in the beginning of this and the NCAA would love to make an example out of someone right away to show that they mean business with this new rule.

*****

Randy Gale heads the Firecrackers-Gale program based in Colorado and contacted us today about one of his players who committed just last night (see below). We asked his thoughts on the ruling and he said:

“As a travel ball coach with a team filled with 2020’s, and 2021’s I have mixed emotions on the ruling. I personally wish it would have been Sept 1. of the sophomore year. I think that would have been a better decision.

I feel like it is going to very hard to make sure these girls that were looking forward to a very successful year of recruiting this summer, now have to wait an additional two summers to find out where they really stand with the schools that are interested in them.”

“But, I get the overall decision and agree on something needed to be done about not putting pressure on the girls/families, and coaches. I do believe the power 5 schools will still always get who they want and puts the other schools at a bit of a disadvantage.”

“I have a couple other girls getting serious interest right now from some high-level schools so I am interested if this will push offers to them in the next week, or set everything back. So much to talk about here!”

“Change is hard to get used to, and for those of us that are used to the current way need to learn and adjust. In the end, I think this will be better for the future of the sport and save some money for the younger teams. Now maybe organizations can put those extra funds in clinics and bring in alums to really focus on the fundamentals of the game.”

*****

Before and after the Early Verbal legislation news came out yesterday, there’s been a lot happening on the recruiting front… here are some newsworthy notes before we run our list of the 50 new additions that have come in over the last two days!

RECRUIT NEWS:

Nebraska picked up two talented players from the Corona Angels 04 team coached by Ondra Carter: 2022 OF Dakota Carter (coach’s daughter) who was ranked in the Extra Inning Softball Elite 100 and 2023 1B Cheyenne Castille, one of the fast-rising 7th graders on the West Coast.

Cheyenne Castille, Coach Rhonda Revelle of Nebraska and Dakota Carter.

What makes this a nice story on both sides is the players have been best friends since they were six or seven years old.

We’ll let Michelle Carter, Dakota’s mom, pick up the story from here…

“They have played together every year since Coach Carter (my husband, also know as Ondra, pronounced ‘Andre’) started coaching a 10U travel team and Dakota and Cheyenne got a roster spot by default! Ondra was the manager/coach and Cheyenne had an older sister on the team too.”

“Cheyenne’s family mirrors our family in a sense that we both have older kids in their early 30’s and late 20’s and then we both had a huge break in between our next set of kids.”

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