The College Golf Recruiting Timeline

by | Jan 14, 2021 | Recruiting Process | 0 comments

college golf recruiting timeline

 

The College Golf Recruiting Timeline

 

Introduction

Understanding the college golf recruiting timeline can greatly impact your ability to get recruited. This post is going to explain the relevant recruiting rules and outline everything you need to know about the college golf recruiting so that you can be sure that you’re gaining the right experience and are on the right track to being recruited to play golf in college.

The first thing you need to know about are the NCAA rules that impact the college golf recruiting timeline — when you can contact coaches, when coaches can respond, when you’re allowed to meet with coaches, and when coaches are allowed to make verbal commitment and scholarship offers.

Once you have an understanding of the college golf recruiting rules that impact the recruiting timeline, I’ll tell you more about what you can do before then to prepare for the recruiting process, as well as outline several other significant milestones in the recruiting process so that you are able to proactively contact coaches and increase your ability to get recruited.

 

Relevant College Golf Recruiting Rules

Here are the rules that apply to all NCAA DI Colleges and Universities: 

Start of 9th Grade:

  • You are officially considered a Prospective Student-Athlete (PSA) by the NCAA
  • You are all able to email coaches, but they cannot respond to your email other than to explain the rules (that they cannot communicate with you yet) and share a questionnaire
  • You are not supposed to call coaches — if you do, coaches cannot speak with you or return your call
  • Coaches cannot initiate calls or emails you

June 15th following 10th grade:

August 1 before 11th grade:

November during 12th grade:

 

Ivy League and Ivy-like schools have additional recruiting rules

The Ivy League and the NESCAC League have additional rules in place, largely relating to academics, that impact their recruiting timeline. The Ivy League Joint Statement is the set of rules all of the member schools agree to follow. Here are the two that are most relevant to the recruiting process.

July 1 after junior year:

  • This is the first date when each school’s Admissions Office is allowed to communicate with coaches about a prospect’s likelihood of admission. Getting this feedback from Admissions is what coaches call a “pre-read” and it is based on the recruit’s transcript, test scores, and senior class schedule.

October 1 of senior year:

  • This is the first date that recruits are eligible to receive Likely Letters from Admissions.

 

Understanding the Recruiting Rules

These same rules do not apply to DIII schools, however, most DIII schools follow a similar (or slightly delayed) timeline so there is no need to adjust your recruiting plans specifically for DIII schools. 

The timeline above gives you a sense of the rules as well as when coaches and PSAs are communicating and making decisions. Still, this is a wide range. And just understanding the rules doesn’t help you get recruited — it doesn’t give you the experience you need to be a strong candidate nor does it explain how you should be communicating with coaches. Perhaps most importantly, it also doesn’t illuminate when coaches make their offers.

While coaches can make offers anytime between June following 10th grade and the end of senior year, the majority of coaches are making their offers during the second half of junior year and the summer following. The general rule of thumb here is that the more competitive the school, the earlier the coach will make offers. 

There are, of course, some exceptions to this rule. A program’s ranking, division, league, as well as each coach’s style all impact when they make decisions about who they want on their team. 

You should develop a recruiting plan that maps to the school with the fastest/earliest recruiting timeline that you are talking to. It’s easy to delay your communication with a coach and it’s nice to have a bit of extra time to keep building your resume; it’s really hard to make up ground if you fall behind or are too late.

 

College Golf Recruiting Checklist

Below is my recommended timeline for navigating the college golf recruiting process. Following this outline will help you maximize your chances of getting recruited to ALL schools.

Think of this as a checklist. As you progress to and through high school, check off these key milestones as they occur. This will help keep you on track and set you up for recruiting success!

Middle School:

  • Play primarily local and regional golf tournaments to gain experience.
  • Focus on having fun and building a solid foundation for your game.
  • Find an instructor that you trust, and explain your goals.

9th grade:

  • Join high school golf team
  • Register with the NCAA Eligibility Center
    • This is when the NCAA recommends that kids register, primarily to help kids ensure that they are taking the required number of “core” classes that will enable them to be eligible to compete in college athletics. I have yet to work with a student who wasn’t already on track to meet the core requirements. So there’s a really good chance that you just don’t need to worry about the core requirements. That said, it’s good to double check, especially if you are thinking about or have repeated a grade.
    • You cannot complete the Eligibility process until you have graduated from high school, so other than confirming that you understand the class requirements, there is no need to rush to register with the NCAA Eligibility Center — I generally recommend registering at some point during 11th grade.

Summer before 10th grade:

  • Add national-level tournaments to your schedule
  • Start building a strong golf resume
    • Gain experience through top-level competition
    • Build confidence through low scores in local events
    • Establish a Junior Golf Scoreboard ranking
  • Start learning about college golf
    • Visit team web pages
    • Follow college golf teams on instagram
    • Attend a local college golf tournament
  • Create spreadsheet to track tournament results
    • Important info to include: name of tournament, location, dates, your scores, course par, course distance, your finish within the field

10th grade:

  • Take PSAT through your school
  • Make a college golf resume
  • Build list of schools to contact
  • Send introductory email
  • Send additional 1-2 emails per semester if you are ranked in the top 200 in your class
  • Send re-introduction email on June 15th
    • Include all tournament results from the last 12 months
    • Share your upcoming summer schedule
    • Ask each coach what he or she looks for in top prospects (academically and athletically) — be sure you know these benchmarks!

Summer between 10th and 11th grade:

  • Ask coaches at your top 5-7 schools for phone calls
  • Plan to travel more — play in tournaments that are near schools of interest, especially after August 1 (when you are allowed to meet with coaches on campus)
  • Send emails every month with tournament results and general updates on game progress
    • Good things to include: swing video, trackman data, swing coach contact info, transcript through 10th grade
  • Prepare for the SAT or ACT next year
    • There are some great resources online through places like Khan Academy
    • Simply taking practice tests is also a huge help

11th grade:

  • Take PSAT again through your school
  • Take SAT or ACT at least twice
    • First test should be during your first semester, the earlier you are ready to test, the better!
    • Take these tests early and often — the sooner you reach the score a coach asks for, the sooner the coach can really start to consider you for their team
  • If you are a foreign student and English is not your first language, take the TOEFL test
  • Register with the NCAA Eligibility Center if you haven’t already
  • Continue to send update emails to coaches roughly every month, depending on when you have news to share
  • Compete in primarily local and regional tournaments when school is in session
  • Can play in national tournaments if opportunity presents itself
  • Fill out questionnaires at schools of interest
  • ASK ALL COACHES — WHERE AM I ON YOUR LIST?
  • Narrow list to 10-15 schools by end of first semester
    • Schools remaining on your list should be places where you feel relatively confident that you can get an offer
    • You should be in regular communication with these coaches, meaning that they are pretty much always responding to your emails
    • Try to visit most of these schools
  • Narrow list to 5-7 schools by end of the school year
    • You should have talked on the phone with all of these coaches
    • Visit any schools in this group that you have not yet visited
    • Meet with all of these coaches on campus, ask about possibility of an official visit
    • Make sure that all of these coaches see you play — if they didn’t see you play last summer or during the school year, be sure that they will be able to see you play over the summer
    • (note, most coaches will want to see you play in person, but it is not necessary for all coaches)

Summer between 11th and 12th grade:

  • Compete in local, regional, and national level tournaments
    • Balance is key! 
  • Send scores to coaches after every 1-2 tournaments
    • These can and should be informal updates — a quick text is great!
  • Tell your #1 school that it is your top choice
  • Send transcript to coaches
    • Ask if they can tell you how likely you are to be admitted if you apply
  • Ask if they can give you more information about scholarships
    • How much can they give you?
  • Get an offer from a school and verbally commit! 
  • This sometimes takes longer — it’s also quite normal for coaches to not make offers until October or even later

12th grade:

  • Make sure that you know your school’s early application deadline
  • Complete application, often using the CommonApp
  • Apply to college
  • Sign NLI
  • Receive decision from Admissions
  • Complete NCAA Eligibility Center process

 

Troubleshooting — Am I Too Late To Be Recruited?

All the time I hear from parents that they are concerned about “missing the boat”, either by not having helped their junior golfer gain the right experience necessary to be recruited or by waiting to start the recruiting process until it’s already too late. If you follow the plan outlined above, you won’t miss the boat!

That said, you really never completely miss the boat. You might have to adjust your expectations, but you will likely still have options. I’ve started working with kids who have limited tournament experience during the summer before their senior year, and there are still options available to them — they can still get recruited and play golf in college. I also have coaches reach out to me throughout the year asking if I know any kids who are looking to enroll in a matter of months. 

If you are late to the recruiting process or realize that you don’t have the experience to be recruited at your top choice school, you also have the option of a gap year. Covid has made this an increasingly popular option. The gap year is an amazing opportunity to buy yourself more time… more time to work on your game and gain the right experience, and more time to communicate with coaches throughout the recruiting process.

So there you have it… that’s everything you need to know about the college golf recruiting timeline and the NCAA rules that are in place to help regulate this process. As I mentioned above, there isn’t just one recruiting timeline. But following the plan I outlined will give you the best chances of building and exploring all of your options. If you follow this plan, you won’t “miss the boat”.

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