After an official visit, when the recruit is on the drive home and the day is winding down, the real conversation begins.

Sometimes it’s the coaching staff sitting down together - a formal debrief, everyone around the table.

It could also be more informal; one coach catching the other in the hallway, or popping into an office to get the lowdown on how they thought the visit went.

Either way, it happens. And what gets said in those conversations shapes what happens next in a recruit’s process in ways she’ll never fully see.

This piece is about that conversation.

The staff isn’t one voice

When a family thinks about “the program” recruiting their daughter, they tend to imagine a single entity with a single opinion.

“This school seems to really like her.”

“That school doesn’t seem interested.”

In reality, a D1 coaching staff is a group of three or four coaches with different relationships, different information, and different amounts of skin in the game when it comes to any given recruit. The support staff - athletic trainers, strength coaches, directors of operations - will also interact with recruits on visits and potentially have their say too.

At programs that do this well, where the head coach doesn’t rule with an iron fist and wants to empower their assistants, recruiting evaluation is a structured exercise.

Coaches independently rate players after tournaments - each staff member scores the same recruit without seeing anyone else’s numbers first, then the data gets charted. Where there’s agreement, there’s confidence. Where there are outliers, there’s a conversation.

The disagreement is the point. It surfaces information that might not come out in a group setting, where groupthink can take over and strong opinion can anchor everyone else. It also challenges assistant coaches to speak their minds and develop autonomous thoughts on players, rather than just going along with whatever the head coach wants.

The same logic applies to exercises such as asking each coach to name their five essential recruits from the class, or ranking a pool of 20 players, or dividing them into scholarship tiers.

The goal of these exercises is to generate data that backs up or challenges a decision - not to let one person’s enthusiasm or another’s hesitation drive the outcome without scrutiny.

This is the machinery running in the background, while a recruit is sending emails and wondering why she hasn’t heard back.

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Somewhere in your club’s parent network right now, someone knows something. Or, at least, they think they do.

A parent heard from another parent that a certain program is cutting players to make roster space for new recruits. A coach mentioned to someone that the head coach at such-and-such a school is on thin ice after a subpar season. A girl from your high school team committed to a program you were interested in, and within the hour, the texts are flying about the why, the how, and the injustice of it all.

This is peak rumor season in field hockey recruiting. Visits are starting, another bunch of commitments will come in the aftermath, and the information gaps are filling with speculation, jealousy, and incomplete truths.

Most of it is wrong, though. And even the parts that aren’t wrong don’t really concern you.

Why the intel is usually unreliable

There are three reasons the rumor mill mostly produces garbage.

The first is incentives.

People in a recruiting network aren’t neutral sources. A parent who tells you their daughter got a “full ride” scholarship offer might not want to admit publicly that it was actually a fraction of that - or that there was no offer at all.

Similarly, a parent who shares that another family was contacted by this coach or invited to that clinic might be guessing, working from secondhand information, or softening a story to make their own daughter’s situation look better by comparison.

Everyone in the recruiting process has something at stake and something to hide, and that shapes what they share and how they share it.

The second is jealousy. When a player from your club commits somewhere you were interested in, the natural instinct is to ask why.

But the search for an explanation produces motivated reasoning as our less flattering instincts kick in. “She only got in because her parents are alumni” or “The club coach must have advocated for her” are things people say when they need a reason that has nothing to do with their own daughter’s process. It might feel good to justify it this way, but it’s rarely the whole story.

The third is that you don’t know what you don’t know. The rumors about programs are usually the worst offenders here - coaches getting fired, players getting cut, programs only recruiting from certain clubs, and so on.

Some are true, most are distorted, a few are totally fabricated. And even when there’s something to it, you’re getting a version of it filtered through two or three conversations, with the original context long gone.

How the rumor mill starts

Let’s return to that notion of a player committing to a school someone else local really wants. The Instagram post will barely have its first few likes before the rumors and gossip start.

“I heard she was told she won’t play but was desperate enough to take the offer”

“Surely she’s not getting money from a program at that level”

“I don’t know what they see in her, she’s not even the best player on her high school team”

And so on. Maybe the rumor is accurate, or has a kernel of truth to it. But it still doesn’t explain why, and the why is the part nobody outside the program can see.

Programs fill their rosters from multiple tiers simultaneously. A coach might be recruiting one or two top scholarship targets, a couple of mid-range offers, and someone who brings positional depth or culture fit at lower or no cost.

Two players being evaluated by the same program might be in completely different conversations and buckets - one being courted for a scholarship spot, one being asked to fill a different role entirely. Neither outcome is a direct comment on the other player.

When you hear a rumor and start measuring your daughter against it, you’re comparing two situations that might not be comparable at all.

Run your own race

You’ve heard that advice before. From me, and plenty of others.

But it’s worth naming the specific thing that makes the rumor mill so damaging beyond just the distraction. When you’re spending energy analyzing someone else’s commitment or process - what she got, why she got it, whether it makes sense - you’re orienting around what you don’t have rather than what you do.

That energy would be far better spent on the controllables in your own process - who you need to email and follow up with, which schools you should add to your list, which ones you should move on from, and so on.

The rumor mill will always have something to offer: a new piece of intel, a fresh reason to feel like you’re falling behind, another commitment to dissect. Which means the decision to stop listening to it has to be an active choice, not something that happens by accident.

Your process is yours. The noise isn’t.

I’ve really enjoyed the first round of my new Strategy Sessions - one hour, three topics of your choosing, direct help with your recruiting process. These are now shut down for the rest of August as I’ll be at the World Cup with the USA WNT (this piece comes to you from our holding camp in Spain!), but bookings are open for September and beyond.

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June 15 opened the contact window. Coaches could finally text, call, and email. After two years of one-sided communication, both sides could actually talk to each other.

Then, there was another date to wait for.

August 1 is when official and unofficial visits can begin for the class of 2028. It’s another moment families have been waiting for - the chance to hang out with the team, maybe stay in a dorm overnight, get to know the coaches in person, and see the campus.

But for some recruits, an early August visit is going to feel different than they imagined. Here’s what to know before you go.

The six weeks in between

A lot happens in the gap between June 15 and August 1, even if most of it isn’t visible.

Programs are pruning their lists. Some recruits have committed elsewhere. Others have narrowed their own lists and quietly “broken up with” certain programs. It might have happened the other way around too, if a program saw someone play again and decided to cut them loose.

Coaches are tracking where everyone stands, figuring out who still needs to be convinced to get on campus, and who just needs a visit to confirm what they already feel.

For programs that landed their top targets early, visits aren’t as urgent. For programs that missed on several recruits and need to make up ground, August 1 can’t come soon enough. They’re actively working to get certain players on campus because they believe a visit will close what calls couldn’t.

It’s similar on the athlete side. You might have arranged a visit to a school you already know you love, because you just need to get the feeling. Maybe you’re headed to a school that wasn’t even on your list before June 15, but the relationship has developed in a promising way.

Either way, both sides have been itching to get on with visits during this seemingly arbitrary time between first contact and being allowed to get on campus and experience it.

All of that context and waiting shapes what you’re walking into when you arrive.

What early August visits are and aren’t

An early August visit will give you about 80-90% of what you’d get later in the fall. That’s still a lot, and typically enough to make a decision if needs be. But it’s worth acknowledging what you won’t be getting if you plan a visit for early August.

The campus in August, before the semester starts, is much quieter than it will be in a few weeks once school has started. No students milling between classes, no dining halls at full capacity, no sense of the rhythm and density of normal college life. You’re evaluating the bones of a place without its usual heartbeat. It’s useful information, but it’s incomplete.

Later in the fall, programs often schedule visits to coincide with a home game. You watch from the stands, but you might also be in a pregame team meeting the night before. You see how the staff handles competition, how players carry themselves under pressure, what the atmosphere around the program actually feels like. You don’t get that in August.

Depending on the preseason start date, the team may not be on campus yet - or maybe not all of them. Some programs will run camps and clinics around this time to help ensure their own players (who typically work the event) are around, but it will vary from school to school.

So if they haven’t started practices yet, you won’t have one of those to observe up close and personal either, which is another visit element most players tend to enjoy.

Therefore, if you’re visiting in the first week of August, you may get a slightly different version of the team experience than you’d get once preseason is underway.

Once preseason starts, most of that changes. The team is practicing, available for hosting, and the visit starts to look much more like what you’d expect.

For some recruits, this stuff won’t matter as much, but in my experience, “time with the team” is usually among a top visit request. So it’s worth getting your itinerary ahead of time and seeing how much of that you’re getting and in what contexts.

But… going early often suits both sides

Both sides have good reasons for wanting to visit in early August, beyond the waiting game they’ve been forced to play.

The coach hosting your visit is about to start preseason, which is one of the busiest times of the year for them. There aren’t hours limits like there will be once school starts, so it’s often multiple team events - practices, conditioning, strength work, team meetings, film study, or team bonding events - to plan and execute each day.

Few college coaches enjoy the fact that they’re trying to prioritize both their current and future teams at the same time once preseason gets underway. Even without the added events of a visit, a preseason workday might already be 12-14 hours long.

Simultaneously trying to show a recruit the best version of their program is hugely taxing on top of that. Both of those things are happening at once, and both of them matter a lot.

So many coaches like to get a bunch of visits done in the first week of August, before the madness fully begins.

It’s similarly complicated for recruits who are heading into their own high school seasons and are already practicing daily, and missing some of that to take their college visits.

Many are keen to do early August visits so they don’t miss any school later in the semester, so there are multiple competing interests there too.

The timing question

None of this means you have to wait.

Waiting for a September or October visit that gives you the full campus experience has a potential cost. The program might commit someone else in the meantime. If a coach has made you an offer, there’s no guarantee that she will hold that spot forever.

And if you’re down to your final few schools and close to a decision, adding another month to your timeline for the sake of a slightly more complete visit may not be the right trade.

The question to ask yourself before you decide on an early August visit is whether what you’ll see will be enough to help you make your mind up about that school and that program.

August visits aren't a consolation prize. They're just a different version of the experience, and knowing the difference is what lets you use them well.

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We were running a technical goalscoring exercise. Forwards and goalkeepers, no defenders, just working through connections and shooting techniques inside the circle.

One of the forwards received the ball with her back to goal, took her first touch across her body to get her feet facing forward, and shaped to shoot.

The ball whizzed into the sideboard, and the goalkeeper called a halt to the exercise.

“You won’t have time to turn in a game when you’re being tightly marked. Shoot that from your backspace, it needs to be realistic.”

This was coaching, but from a team-mate. Firm, direct, no apology for saying it. The forward nodded, and they ran it again.

A few minutes later, a different player took a big backswing on a shot from close range - the kind you can get away with when there are no defenders and nobody contesting it. The goalkeeper called that out too.

“What are you doing? You’re a few yards from goal. You won’t have that time and space when it’s for real. Hands apart, get it off your stick quicker.”

Again: a teammate, not a coach. Direct, no softening.

In the highest performing environments I’ve been in, this is what separates groups that consistently improve from ones that plateau. If you have one or two who do it, great, but when it’s a majority, it elevates the environment massively.

What elite athletes actually demand

The best players I’ve been around are demanding. Of themselves, each other, and their coaches.

They ask for what they need from teammates: the right pass, the right lead, the right weight on the ball. They understand that 11 players are codependent on each other, and that the group only gets better if everyone holds everyone else to the same standard they hold themselves.

If something isn’t working in a training session, they’ll let the coaches know. If an exercise feels unrealistic, they’ll push back on it. If a teammate is cutting corners, someone will notice, and someone will say something.

This sounds simple, but most players - even good ones - often don’t do it.

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Most families approach a campus visit from one of two places.

The first: we are here to evaluate this program. We’re checking the facilities, meeting the coaches, getting a feel for whether our daughter could be happy here for four years. The visit is ours to run.

The second: we need to make a good impression. Say the right things, ask smart questions, don’t embarrass ourselves. The visit is something we have to pass.

Both of those instincts are right. Neither of them is the whole picture.

A campus visit is the one moment in the entire recruiting process where genuine, unfiltered information flows in both directions simultaneously. The coach is learning something real about you at the exact moment you’re learning something real about them. Understanding that changes how you experience every part of the day.

The campus tour

What you think is happening: You’re seeing the facilities, getting a sense of the place, deciding whether it feels right.

What the coach thinks is happening: She’s watching how you engage. Are you asking questions, or waiting to be told things? Do you notice details - the locker room quirks, the film room setup, what’s on the walls - or do you walk through it passively? A recruit who asks about something specific she noticed tells a coach something. A recruit who nods along to everything tells a coach something different.

The facilities are largely irrelevant to the evaluation. How you move through them isn’t.

The meal with the players

What you think is happening: A chance to connect, have fun, get a feel for the team culture.

What the coach thinks is happening: This is the most unfiltered data point of the entire visit. She’s not in the room, which means nobody is performing for her. What her players report back - and they always report back - carries enormous weight. Did your daughter ask questions or talk about herself? Did she seem genuinely curious about what their experience is like, or did she spend the meal selling herself? Was she easy to be around?

The meal with the players isn’t a social event with recruiting on the side. It’s the other way around.

The one-on-one with the head coach

What you think is happening: An important meeting where you need to ask smart questions and make a strong impression.

What the coach thinks is happening: She’s finding out whether there’s a real person behind the recruit. Does she push back on anything, or agree with everything? Does she ask something that could only come from someone who’s actually thought about this program specifically? Is there any moment where she says something surprising, or is the whole conversation exactly what a well-prepared recruit would say?

Coaches have these meetings constantly. They can tell the difference between genuine curiosity and performed curiosity within a few minutes. The families who treat this as a test to pass often produce exactly that: a performance. The ones who treat it as a real conversation tend to leave a different kind of impression.

Watching practice

What you think is happening: You’re evaluating the coaching style, the team’s level, the intensity of the environment, and how everyone treats each other under a bit of pressure. You're there to observe, so you hang back and take it in. Watch quietly, don't get in the way, be respectful of the space. That's the polite thing to do.

What the coach thinks is happening: He's watching what you watch - and hanging back reads as passive. The recruits who ask if they can stand closer to hear the team talks, who notice something specific about how the team plays and ask about it afterwards, who engage with what they're seeing rather than observe it from a distance - those are the ones who leave an impression.

A player who says "I noticed your defenders force to the forehand rather than the baseline when defending the circle - is that deliberate?" has just told a coach something about how she watches the game. Most recruits never ask a follow-up question about what they saw. Polite observation is forgettable. Genuine engagement isn't.

The moment before you leave

What you think is happening: You don’t want to seem too eager or put pressure on the relationship, so you keep it warm but noncommittal. Thank them for everything, say you have a lot to think about, follow up with a nice email tomorrow.

What the coach thinks is happening: Does she say anything real? After a full day or two together, a recruit who leaves with the same vague positivity she arrived with gives a coach nothing to work with. Both sides have just invested hours in this.

The goodbye is the moment to say something true - not a commitment if you aren’t ready for that, not a performance, just honesty. “I want to be transparent - this visit moved this program up significantly for me” is a sentence that costs nothing to say and changes everything about how a coach thinks about you when you walk out the door. Most recruits never say it.

The thing both sides forget

The visit is not an audition. It’s not an inspection tour. It’s the one moment in a process that is otherwise defined by incomplete information and strategic ambiguity where both sides get to find out something true about the other.

The families who do this well aren’t the ones who perform flawlessly or interrogate the program most aggressively. They’re the ones who show up as themselves - curious, direct, paying attention- and let that be enough.

Before I leave for Europe with the USA WNT for the World Cup next month, I'm opening up a handful of one-to-one Strategy Sessions. One hour, three topics of your choosing. A few spots left in July!

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Two families hired me for one hour each this June. Not a package. Not a monthly retainer. One conversation.

Both their daughters committed to top D1 programs within two weeks of that call.

That’s by design. The Strategy Session is one hour, on purpose. No package, no standing commitment, no retainer to renew. Because the thing families are actually missing isn’t more information or more access. It’s someone who knows the college coach side sitting with their exact situation for an hour and helping them think their way through it.

Here’s what that looked like for these two families.

Family one came to me before June 15, on the front end of the process rather than deep into it. Her parents could already see offers were going to move at different speeds once contact opened, and they worried her quiet personality might work against her in those early calls.

We spent the hour on two things: how to think about timelines and offers before they even arrived, and how she talked about herself. I asked her the kind of questions I’d have asked a recruit when I was a college coach; not about stats, but about her personality. Specific stories instead of rehearsed lines. What she’d say about a weakness. Her leadership style. What she actually wanted to know about a program before deciding.

Her mom put it this way afterward:

On the quiet-versus-loud worry, I told her that quiet isn't a flaw. It's a feature of who she is, not something to fix before a call. Rather than trying to perform a loud, extroverted version of herself to impress coaches, she was better off leaning into her actual style, the kind of leadership that shows up in how she supports a teammate one-on-one. That's not something a blog post can hand you, because it isn't universal. The same advice would be wrong for a kid who thrives being loud and out front.

Family two came to me at the end of June, after the post-June-15th wave had already hit. Calls, offers, a full inbox, and no clear way to sort through any of it.

They didn’t need someone to prepare them for what was coming. They needed someone to help them make sense of what had already landed: which programs were worth staying in on, how to handle the pressure tactics and fake deadlines coaches lean on, how to tune out the noise around other recruits’ commitments, and how to prep for NCCs by engaging with schools that had shown interest, rather than chasing those who hadn’t.

Neither family walked away with a binder of generic advice. They walked away with a decision framework built for their daughter, made by someone who’s sat on the other side of the recruiting desk and knows what coaches mean when they say the things they say.

That’s the entire premise of The Strategy Session. One hour, one family, one specific situation - not a template stretched to fit everyone.

If it sounds like something that could help on your recruiting journey, book some time on my calendar and we can start figuring it out together.

You can read the full testimonials from these families here and here. Click the button below to reserve a 60-minute consultation with me - you pick three topics for us to discuss in detail. Each slot costs $125.

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Page 50 of Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code contains one of the most useful sentences ever written about how elite organizations make decisions about people.

Coyle is writing about the San Antonio Spurs and how they built one of the most successful dynasties in NBA history. He notes that their scouting template includes a checkbox labeled “Not a Spur.” A check in that box means the player will not be pursued, no matter how talented he is.

No explanation required. No appeal process. One check from a Spurs scout and it’s over.

I read that and recognized it immediately - because I had my own version.

Looking for the No as well as the Yes

When I was evaluating recruits as a college coach, I had things I was looking for - binary things, yes or no - and if a player didn’t tick any of them, she wasn’t getting brought to my head coach’s attention. Didn’t matter how good she was.

These weren’t skill markers. The hockey part is partially known from the video you watch before deciding to watch a player live, and can be seen pretty clearly.

What I was watching for was harder to name. And that’s the point.

Every program has its own version of the checkbox. The things on the list aren’t standardized. They’re not published anywhere. They reflect what that particular coach values, what that particular culture requires, what that particular staff has decided is non-negotiable for them.

At some programs it’s effort-based - work rate, tackling back, movement off the ball. At others it’s whether a player demands the ball when the game is on the line. Whether she seems to want to win even when the stakes feel low. Whether there’s something in how she competes that tells you she’s a gamer in the way that word actually means, not as a compliment people hand out freely, but as a real quality you either see or you don’t.

The software coaches use at recruiting tournaments often has a tagging system. Labels you can attach to a prospect’s profile as you watch. Those labels look like organizational tools. For a lot of coaches they’re actually the checkboxes - the real-time record of whether a player is crossing thresholds that have nothing to do with her highlight reel.

A player can be on a list and fall off it because of a tag she never knew existed.

Why this matters

The recruiting process is visible at the top and invisible everywhere else. Families can see the email exchanges, the camp invitations, the June 15 calls. What they can’t see is the evaluation happening before any of that - the quiet, parallel assessment running alongside the skill evaluation.

A player who dominates a game but drops her head after every turnover is showing coaches something. A player who’s having a quiet game but competes hard in every transition is showing coaches something else. A player who argues with her club coach on the sideline - or rolls her eyes when subbed - is showing coaches something they will remember long after they’ve forgotten the score.

Coyle goes on to note that the Spurs’ approach wasn’t simply about selecting high-character players.

Some of their best players had red flags elsewhere before joining San Antonio. Boris Diaw was called lazy and overweight at Charlotte. Patty Mills was released by his Chinese team for allegedly faking an injury. Danny Green was cut by Cleveland for his casual approach to defense.

The checkbox wasn’t a character test in the traditional sense. It was a culture fit test. The question wasn’t “is this person perfect?” It was “is there something here that tells me this person won’t be one of us?”

That distinction is important. The Spurs weren’t filtering for perfect people. Several of their best players had been ‘trouble’ elsewhere - players who were called lazy, released for faking injuries, cut for casual defending. They weren’t “Not a Spur” because something about how they played or competed told Spurs scouts they’d be right for that specific culture.

One size can’t fit all

That is the nuance worth sitting with. A player who doesn’t tick the boxes for one program might tick every box for another. The checkboxes aren’t universal. They’re program-specific, which is why the “what are coaches looking for in a player” questions are difficult to answer.

What makes you a culture fit at a “dot-to-dot hockey” program with a demanding coach might look completely different from what makes you a culture fit somewhere that values creativity and individual expression.

You’re not being judged against some universal standard. You’re being judged against a standard you can’t see, that varies from program to program.

Ultimately, if a program has five things on their list and you tick three or four of them, you’re probably staying in the conversation. If a player of similar ability only ticks one or two, that gap - invisible to everyone except the coach making the notes - is often what separates the ones who get calls from the ones who wonder why they didn’t.

The checkbox exists whether you know about it or not. The only question is which side of it you end up on.

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Over the last two weeks I’ve covered what the 5-for-5 ruling means at the macro level, and what’s happening inside programs as coaches navigate the most complex roster puzzle they’ve ever faced.

Today is about you. Specifically, about the single biggest mistake I think families are going to make in this environment, and how to avoid it.

The scarcity trap

When spots feel scarce, the natural human response is to act quickly. Lock something down before it disappears. Say yes before someone else does.

That instinct is understandable. The math is real: fewer spots, more competition, and a recruiting environment moving faster than it should. Some families will read the last two pieces and conclude that the only rational response is to take the first credible offer that comes along.

There’s even advice circulating right now in other sports, from people who should know better, that amounts to: if you have a good offer on the table, say yes now.

That advice isn’t wrong exactly. It’s incomplete in a way that can cause real harm.

A panicked commitment to the wrong program feels like a safe outcome. It comes with a four-year price tag and a transfer portal entry waiting at the other end. The families who navigate this era well won’t be the ones who move fastest. They’ll be the ones who move deliberately, with clarity about what they want and enough discipline not to let fear make the decision for them.

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Women’s lacrosse quietly made a sensible rule change recently. Their contact date - the equivalent of our June 15 - used to open at midnight. They’ve moved it to noon.

That’s it. That’s the whole change. And the fact that it needed to be made at all says something important.

The midnight circus

In sports with high-volume recruiting - football, basketball, and to a lesser extent lacrosse - the contact date opening at midnight has produced a genuinely bizarre ritual.

Coaches sending texts and emails the moment the clock ticks over. Some calling players on the phone. Families sitting up waiting to see who reaches out, treating midnight like New Year’s Eve, except instead of champagne there’s just anxiety and a phone screen.

Field hockey isn’t as extreme as some sports. Coaches calling players at midnight isn’t standard practice here the way it is elsewhere… yet. But the energy around June 15 - the staying up, the waiting, the checking the phone - is the same, as many send their first texts or emails at 12:01am.

And it’s worth asking whether any of it actually makes sense.

What drives coaches to do this

I’ll be honest about the incentives, because they’re real even if the behavior is slightly unhinged.

Coaches contact players at midnight because they’re afraid. Afraid that being second signals lesser interest. Afraid that by the time they reach out at a civilized hour, a player has already fielded multiple offers and mentally closed her list. Afraid of missing their shot entirely.

There are cases - rare, but real - where a player has committed before a coach even gets to talk to her. And there are cases where a player’s first day is so full of conversations that programs who reached out later never got a look-in. So the fear isn’t completely irrational.

But think about what this logic actually produces. A coach who has spent two or three years watching a player, building her case internally, carefully crafting her June 15 list - and her strategy for the most important contact moment of the recruiting cycle is to send a text at midnight because she's worried about being beaten by eight hours.

The part that bothers me

Here’s the thing that’s always bothered me more than the coaches’ behavior, though: what it requires of the families.

These are teenage girls. The night before June 15 is already one of the most anxious nights of their young lives - the culmination of months or years of work, uncertainty, comparison, waiting. What they should be doing is trying, against all those nerves and butterflies, to actually get some sleep. So that when the calls and texts and requests start coming in, they’re rested, clear-headed, and able to handle what might be a very full and very important day.

Instead, some of them are sitting up until midnight to see who reaches out. And then not going to sleep because more texts are coming. And then realizing that some coaches operate on West Coast time, which means midnight their time is 3am on the East Coast. And suddenly a teenager is awake at 3am, exhausted, trying to process information about the most significant decision of her athletic life so far.

You wouldn’t text a colleague at midnight in most cases. If you knew they were sitting up waiting for it, you’d feel uncomfortable about that - because it’s not a reasonable thing to ask of another adult, let alone a 16-year-old.

There’s a lack of respect baked into the midnight culture that the lacrosse governing body has now, quietly and correctly, decided to do something about.

What I actually did as a coach

I scheduled my texts and emails to send at 8 or 9am.

Not because I was trying to be noble about it, but because it made more sense. A player who’s slept, who’s had breakfast, who’s sitting with her family and actually present for the day - that’s the player I want to have a first conversation with. Not the one who’s been awake since midnight running on adrenaline and notifications.

The coaches who reach out at midnight aren’t more committed. They’re more anxious. And that anxiety, while understandable, isn’t something families should have to absorb on top of everything else they’re already carrying.

June 15 has passed for this cycle, so this is less about this year and more about putting something on record.

If you have a younger player - a freshman or sophomore - file this away. The night before June 15, the most useful thing you can do as a family is agree, together, that you’re going to sleep. The right coaches will still be there in the morning. The texts that matter will still be there when you wake up. An offer that only exists if you respond at midnight isn’t an offer worth having.

Go to sleep.

This piece is an example of the post-June 15 madness; if you want a guide through it, or just want to ask all your recruiting questions with non-judgmental answers, The Recruiting Advisor is available 24/7, is trained specifically on field hockey recruiting, and can help you strategize your next steps.

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Tuesday’s piece covered what the 5-in-5 ruling means at the macro level - the math, the portal surge, the compression of spots for high school players. Today, I want to go inside the room.

The part that families can’t see right now is that college coaches are navigating one of the most complex roster puzzles they’ve ever faced - and they’re doing it in real time, while simultaneously managing recruiting conversations with your daughter.

The dual calendar problem

In a normal year, June 15 is a coach’s primary focus in late spring. Their list is built, their priorities are ranked, and the contact window opening is the moment they’ve been working toward for months.

This year was different. While coaches were finalizing their June 15 lists, a second conversation was happening simultaneously - behind closed doors, with their current players.

The question being asked: if 5-in-5 passes, do you want to stay for a fifth year?

That conversation matters enormously for recruiting families, because every current player who says yes is a roster spot that may no longer be available for an incoming recruit. And these conversations were happening - in some cases, being resolved - before June 15 even arrived.

Those fifth-year agreements are verbal. Just like a recruit’s verbal commitment, a current player’s agreement to stay for a fifth year carries no contractual weight until paperwork is signed.

A rising junior can say yes now and change her mind in the spring of 2028. She might decide she doesn’t want to pursue a graduate degree. She might lose form and playing time, or fall out with the coaching staff. She might have two excellent years, and decide to test herself at a higher level or in a different conference.

Which means coaches building their rosters around fifth-year verbal agreements are carrying the same uncertainty that families experience when their daughter verbally commits. The jeopardy runs in both directions.

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I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. The NCAA’s “5-in-5” proposal has been in the works for months, and there’s been no shortage of hot takes about what it means for recruiting.

I didn’t want to add to that noise until it was actually law. It was unanimously approved by the NCAA Division I Cabinet last week, so here we finally are.

What actually changed

Under the previous rules, Division I athletes had five years to complete four seasons of competition - with the option to redshirt one year. The new model gives athletes up to five years of eligibility, provided they enroll in college no later than the academic year after their 19th birthday.

In plain terms: most players who go straight from high school to college now have the potential for an extra year of eligibility. Redshirts effectively disappear. Most eligibility waivers are gone too.

A few important nuances worth knowing:

Athletes who completed their fourth season by spring 2026 are not entitled to a fifth year under the new rules.

Currently enrolled student-athletes with eligibility remaining after 2025-26 get flexibility - schools can apply either the old rules or the new ones, whichever benefits the individual athlete most.

Prospects graduating high school in spring 2027 and beyond are under the age-based model only.

This currently only applies to Division I athletics - nothing has changed, so far, for Division II and Division III

What’s coming for field hockey

The broad coverage of this ruling has focused on roster bloat in revenue sports. Field hockey has its own specific implications.

Allison Keefe at The Field Hockey Analyst ran the math - average recruiting class sizes across D1 field hockey could shrink from approximately 6.5 players to around 5.4.

That’s not a small shift. Across a sport with around 80 D1 programs, that’s a meaningful compression of opportunity for high school players.

One near-certain consequence is a significant increase in transfer portal activity - likely approaching the volume seen during COVID when everyone received an extra year of eligibility.

Some current players will be pushed out. Programs that want to keep their best current players for a fifth year while still bringing in new recruits will face hard roster math. Not everyone currently on a roster is going to be invited back.

Some players will choose to pursue opportunities elsewhere, even if they’re welcome to stay. We will very likely see an increase in “two-school” playing careers as a result. Ivy League graduates - who can’t play a fifth year at their own institution anyway - were in high demand during COVID, and will be again now.

Of course, there will also be players who are happy to move on from college, and field hockey, upon graduation, who won’t take their fifth year. But in an era of AI-driven job market uncertainty, it wouldn’t surprise me if many choose to stay and play to delay the onset of the working world.

What this means for the class of 2027

Players who committed under the old rules are about to arrive on campuses where the rules have changed.

Coaching staffs now have to evaluate their incoming recruiting class while also deciding which current seniors they want to keep for a fifth season - all while staying under the 27-player roster cap.

Some 2027s may find the program they committed to looks different than expected when they arrive - again, something we saw in COVID when the 2021 freshmen arrived on campus and found many of the seniors were sticking around for a fifth year instead of moving on.

Another tricky part is that many Division I-bound 2027s have been verbally committed for quite some time now, but won’t officially sign until at least November.

I don’t want to be alarmist here, as verbal commitments are thankfully something that is still honored in the majority of cases in field hockey.

Proactive coaches will likely have reached out to assure you that you are still part of their plans, but if not, I think you’re perfectly entitled to ask if anything is changing to get that reassurance.

Either way, the environment the class of 2027 is entering will likely be more crowded and more competitive than the one they signed up for.

What this means for the class of 2028

If you’re the parent of a current sophomore - the class that just had their June 15 contact window open - this ruling landed at a complicated moment.

Coaches were already deep into their June 15 preparation when this passed. Many were simultaneously running two parallel processes: deciding which high school prospects to prioritize for the class of 2028, while quietly having conversations with current players about whether they’d be interested in staying for a fifth year.

The result is that coaches are working with less clarity about their own roster needs than they normally would at this stage of the cycle.

What that means in practice: some programs that seemed warm may go quiet while they figure out their roster math. Others that seemed lukewarm may suddenly get more serious if a fifth-year conversation falls through.

If a coach has been actively recruiting your daughter, it’s reasonable to ask directly where they stand on their class needs, or how they are thinking about 5-in-5. The answer will tell you more than any amount of reading between the lines.

The bottom line

Coaches who are uncertain about their roster needs will be watching this summer’s tournaments carefully to confirm or update their evaluations - and what they’re looking for in high school players has shifted.

In an era where every roster spot is harder to justify, they want to see the player who makes the decision easy. The one who shows up ready, competes hard, communicates well, and carries herself like someone who’s going to make their program better from day one.

The broader dynamics of this ruling - which programs keep which seniors, how the portal shakes out, how roster math plays out across 80+ different institutions - are out of your control. Every program is navigating this differently, and trying to second-guess all of it will drive you crazy.

What you can control is the impression you leave every time a coach watches you play. Be the player they still want to take a roster spot on in the new era. Make yourself undeniable.

In Thursday’s paid piece, I’ll get into the mechanics of how this is playing out inside programs right now - the roster calculations coaches are making, the strategic decisions around the portal, and what the short-term versus long-term thinking looks like from the other side of the desk.

In the meantime, if you want a guide through the post-June 15 madness, The Recruiting Advisor is available 24/7, is trained specifically on field hockey recruiting, and can help you strategize your next steps.

Get it now for $29/month

There’s a version of June 15 that families imagine before the date finally rolls around. The contact window opens, the cards go on the table, and suddenly everyone knows where they stand.

That’s not always how it goes, though.

What actually happens is that the asymmetry of information that defined the entire process before June 15 doesn’t fully disappear. It just changes shape. Instead of silence, you get conversation. Instead of not knowing if a coach is interested, you’re now hopefully talking to several who are - and they’re each talking to several of you.

Nobody’s lying. Nobody’s being dishonest. But almost nobody is being fully transparent either, because almost nobody can afford to be yet.

What’s happening on your side

You’ve got calls happening. Maybe several. Some of those conversations feel exciting - there’s a genuine connection, with a coach who clearly wants you. Others feel more like maintenance. A program you’re keeping in your back pocket, just in case the ones you really want don’t work out.

Say you’ve got a dream school that’s been warm but vague, and a second program that’s offered you an official visit already and is waiting on you. You’re probably not telling the second program where they actually rank. You don’t want to burn that bridge in case the dream school falls through. So you keep the conversation going. You stay polite, engaged, vaguely positive. “I just need a little more time to make arrangements and talk to my family.”

You’re not necessarily lying to them. You’re just not telling them everything either.

What’s happening on the other side

You’ve probably realized by now that the coaches are doing the exact same thing.

A coach has her own version of your list. A few players she’s genuinely excited about, a few more she’s keeping warm in case her top targets commit elsewhere. She’s not going to tell the second group they’re not the priority, because she might need them. If her first choices go elsewhere, the player she was being politely noncommittal with last week suddenly becomes much more interesting.

This is what happens when both sides are managing finite resources - your time and attention, her roster spots - under conditions where nobody has full information about what the other side is actually going to do.

Why nobody can fully commit yet

The honest answer is that commitment is binary and information is not. You can’t half-commit to a program, and a coach can’t half-offer you a spot. But the information that would make either of you confident enough to fully commit - what other options will materialize, who else might say yes, who else might say no - doesn’t arrive all at once. It trickles in over weeks, sometimes months.

So both sides hedge. Both sides keep multiple conversations alive longer than feels entirely honest, because the alternative is closing a door before you know what’s actually on the other side of it.

There’s a difference, though, between reasonable hedging and stringing someone along.

Keeping a back-pocket program warm while you wait to hear from your top choice is normal. Letting that same program believe they’re your first choice - actively implying interest you don’t have, arranging a visit you have no intention of following up on, accepting a deadline extension you know you’ll use to wait out someone else entirely - starts to cross into something less fair.

The test isn’t whether you’re being fully transparent. Almost nobody is, on either side, right now. The test is whether you’re being honest enough that the other side could make a reasonable decision with the information they have. If a coach asked you directly where you stood and you’d have to lie outright to keep them engaged, that’s usually the signal you’ve gone further than the moment requires.

What this means for you

None of this is something to fix. It’s just the structure of the process right now, and understanding it changes how you experience it.

If a coach seems warm but noncommittal, that’s not necessarily a bad sign. It might just mean she’s managing her own list the same way you’re managing yours. It’s the same if you’re keeping a program on the back burner while you wait to hear from your top choice. It’s just how this period works for almost everyone going through it.

The discomfort of this in-between stage is real, and it can run for weeks or longer. Nobody loves the ambiguity. But it resolves the same way it always does - through time, more information, and eventually someone making the first real move.

You’re not doing anything wrong by being in it. You’re just in it. So is everyone else.

Eventually, someone defines the relationship. That’s how this stage usually ends.

If you want a guide through the post-June 15 madness, The Recruiting Advisor is available 24/7, is trained specifically on field hockey recruiting, and has been busy this week for exactly this reason.

Get it now for $29/month

The contact window is open. Calls are happening, relationships are building, and for some of you, an offer is going to arrive in the next few weeks, if it hasn’t already.

Before you’ve done a visit.

This isn’t unusual. It happens every year, and it’s a direct consequence of the rule I covered on Tuesday; in-person contact doesn’t begin until August 1, which means official and unofficial visits aren’t possible until then either.

But verbal offers can be made and accepted right now. Which means some families are going to face a decision that, in the abstract, sounds straightforward, but in practice is genuinely hard.

Would you commit to a school without visiting first?

In the hypothetical, most people would say “of course not”. But it’s a different story when you actually have an offer in front of you with a deadline.

What a visit actually gives you

Before we get into strategy, it’s worth being clear about what you’re potentially giving up - and what you’re not.

The single most valuable thing an official or unofficial visit to a college campus provides is something you genuinely cannot replicate any other way: unstructured time with the team without coaches around.

That’s the moment that reveals who these people actually are. Not the highlight reel version, not the version that’s performing for a coach - the real version. How they talk to each other. How they talk to you. Whether you can imagine spending four years in that environment.

When I was structuring official visits, we always scheduled significant blocks of unstructured time with the team for exactly this reason. If that doesn’t go well, it’s game over for both sides. Every coach has a story about a player who was talented on paper, checked every box, and then came on the visit and something was just off.

You cannot get that from a clinic. You can get a surface-level feel from the players working the event and a quick conversation, but it’s not the same as staying overnight, seeing what they do for fun, getting a real read on whether you’d actually fit in among the group.

Nothing replaces it. That’s the honest answer.

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June 15 has come and gone. If you’re in the class of 2028, the contact window is now open - coaches can text you, call you, email you, jump on a video chat. After two years of one-sided communication, that’s a significant shift.

But there’s a part of what changed on Monday that a surprising number of families don’t fully understand. And based on what I’ve been seeing in conversations on The Recruiting Advisor this week, it’s worth being explicit about.

In-person recruiting contact is still not allowed.

Texts, emails, calls, video chats - all permitted. Meeting a coach in person - not permitted. That doesn’t change until August 1. Which means official visits, unofficial visits, and any in-person interaction with a college coach are off the table for the next six weeks.

What this looks like in practice

Every year as a college coach, I’d watch this play out in the same way. A family we’d been talking to virtually would decide in July that they wanted to see campus. Sometimes they’d driven hundreds of miles to get there.

The text would arrive: “Hey Coach! I’m coming to tour your campus today - I’ll be there in a few hours. Could we meet up so I can introduce myself?”

Even if we were on campus - which is no guarantee during a summer of recruiting travel and coaching commitments - we couldn’t meet them. Even if we wanted to.

The response had to be some version of “I’m so sorry, we’re not able to do that until August 1” and the family would be left confused, disappointed, or both.

The same dynamic plays out at summer tournaments. NCC and other major club events are coming up over the next few weeks, and by that point many players will have been in active contact with coaches - calls, texts, the beginning of real relationships. So when a player spots the coach she’s been talking to standing on the sideline, the natural instinct is to go say hello.

That hello is fine. What comes after it isn’t.

Coaches can’t stand and talk and catch up - not because they don’t want to, but because in-person recruiting contact is still impermissible. You might only want to chat about how the tournament is going, but coaches will have to shut it down, especially with their peers watching. It’s not a good look for anyone.

I once worked a three-day summer event where a player I’d been recruiting wanted to debrief about how things were going. We both wanted to have the conversation. We just couldn’t do it in person. So she went home, I went back to my hotel, and we jumpd on a Zoom instead.

It feels absurd. It kind of is absurd. But the rules are the rules, and the penalties for violations are serious enough that no coach is going to risk it.

The simplest way to handle this

Don’t put the coach in the position of having to turn you away. It’s awkward for everyone - not because the coach doesn’t want to talk to you, but because they have no choice. A “we can’t do this in person yet, but I’d love to jump on a call this week” response from a coach isn’t a rejection. It’s a coach following the rules.

August 1 is when in-person contact opens. That’s when official and unofficial visits become possible, when you can walk a campus with a coaching staff, when the relationship moves from screens to real life.

In Thursday’s paid piece, I’ll write about how to think strategically about the window between now and then - because the decisions you make in these six weeks can shape the rest of your recruiting process significantly.

If you want a guide through the post-June 15 madness, The Recruiting Advisor is available 24/7, is trained specifically on field hockey recruiting, and has been busy this week for exactly this reason.

Get it now for $29/month

I hadn’t planned to publish a second newsletter this week, but then I noticed a flurry of activity on The Recruiting Advisor, my AI agent that helps families navigate the process.

The build-up to June 15 predictably brings a spike in usage - and as I reviewed the anonymized conversations, the same pattern kept coming up over and over again: how to answer the questions coaches are going to ask them.

They were feeding the agent specific questions - “what are your strengths and weaknesses,” “why do you want to come here,” “tell me about yourself” - and asking how to handle each one. Preparing answers. Rehearsing responses.

Which reminded me that most players preparing for their first June 15 call have done some version of the same thing. They’ve written notes. They’ve looked up common questions. They feel reasonably prepared going in.

How you answer matters, of course. Just not in the way you might think.

What coaches are actually testing

It’s worth understanding before June 15 that coaches aren’t expecting polished answers. They’ve been on enough calls to know that a 16-year-old talking to a stranger about her future is going to be nervous. It’s normal, and it’s expected.

What they’re listening for is something different.

Can you give me a real answer? Can you tell me something specific - about yourself, about your game, about why you’re interested in this program - that I couldn’t have heard from the last few players I called? And underneath all of that: are you a human being I can imagine coaching for four years?

As a friend of mine at one of the nation’s best programs likes to say: “Can I imagine having an enjoyable conversation with you, sitting in an airport at 6am?”

The player who gives a rehearsed, polished answer that sounds like a college application essay is harder to get a read on than the player who stumbles a little, laughs at herself, and then says something genuine.

Coaches aren’t building a roster of perfect interviews. They’re building a team of people they’ll spend thousands of hours with.

The three patterns that kill calls

1. Naming without claiming

There’s a type of question almost every coach asks some version of.

It might be “what are your core values”, or “what are your strengths and weaknesses”, but at some stage you’ll likely be asked to talk about yourself.

They’ve already seen you play, and now they can finally talk to you, so they’re looking to learn about the person behind the player.

Let's say they go with "how would your teammates describe you?" and the answer is "hardworking, coachable, competitive." That means almost nothing by itself.

The answer that lands is the one with a story attached - a specific moment, a specific situation, something that could only be true of you. Have examples ready. It makes the conversation feel easier and is an early way to show off your personality.

Read more

When I sat down to write this week’s newsletter, I knew it was the last one that would come out before June 15.

I wondered how to capture something that goes beyond the usual last-minute advice, that I’ve given in previous years.

And then I remembered that while every family is anxious about June 15, coaches are too.

If you’re in the class of 2028, you’ve been counting down to June 15 for months. Maybe longer.

So has the coach calling you.

The recruiting conversation is, correctly, always framed around the recruit - the preparation, the anxiety, the waiting. Coaches are presented as the gatekeepers. The ones who do this every year. The ones with the power. The ones who decide. I use that framing myself regularly.

And they do have power. But they’re also humans who have spent the better part of two years building toward a single phone call, and they have no more certainty about how it’s going to go than you do.

Here’s what that looks like from the inside.

The buildup

A coach has been watching you play for two years. Maybe longer. She’s probably seen you play more than 10 times. She’s reviewed your video. She’s had conversations with your club coach. She’s made notes after every evaluation, tracked your development, watched you get better.

You came to her school’s camp, and she loved coaching you. You responded well to the feedback, the vibes were good, the interactions felt easy.

Right before June 15, she sends the packet. The physical one - and among the sales paraphernalia, the handwritten letter that took longer to write than it looks. She’s done this for maybe 15 or 20 recruits. But for each one, she’s tried to make it feel like it was written only for them.

She’s also been doing her intelligence work. Talking to club coaches the way club coaches talk - carefully, professionally, reading between lines. And sometimes a club coach will let something slip. Nothing specific. Just a tone. “She really likes your program. You’re right up there for her.” That’s enough. That gets filed away.

By the time June 15 arrives, she has a picture of you that’s two years in the making. She thinks she knows where you stand. She thinks this is going to go well.

The call

On the other side of the phone, a coach is imagining the same moment you are - just in reverse. The recruit picking up with energy that matches the years of effort. The conversation flowing. The beginning of something.

Sometimes that’s exactly what happens. And when it does, it’s one of the best parts of the job.

But sometimes the response to a scheduling request comes back casual, a little delayed. She can do it in a couple of days. That’s usually not a great sign, but hey, June 15 is insane, she might be only doing a few calls a day to keep herself fresh, it might mean nothing. Except the coach was expecting something closer to excitement, and instead she’s getting availability.

Once the call happens, she knows within 30 seconds.

Maybe the recruit is distracted. Maybe she’s polite but distant. Maybe she says it directly - she’s already made her decision, there’s another program she loves, it’s her dream school, she’s really sorry.

Two years. Gone in a sentence.

What that moment feels like

Coaches aren’t owed anything in this moment. The recruit made her decision and that’s exactly how it should work.

But there’s a particular feeling that comes with two years of building toward something, and then it just isn’t there anymore. The same feeling, I’d imagine, that a player gets when the phone doesn’t ring on June 15 from the program she’d been dreaming about. The same investment. The same sudden absence of something you’d been counting on.

And then, you have to move on. Immediately. There are multiple other calls to make today. The recruit who just said no has made her decision and deserves to be released cleanly. You wish her well, you mean it, and you move forward.

What this means for you

The coach calling you on June 15 has been through some version of this. Maybe not today, but at some point in their career. They know what it feels like to be on the wrong end of a recruiting conversation.

Which means the person who might seem intimidating - the one with the title, the blue-chip program, the scholarship offer - is also a person who has felt the specific sting of this process not going the way they hoped.

That doesn’t lower the stakes. It doesn’t make the call easier. But the next time you imagine the person on the other end of that call as someone who holds all the cards - remember that they’ve also sat where you’re sitting. Waiting for something they’d invested in. Hoping it would go the way they’d imagined.

It doesn’t always. For either side.

However the coach conversations go, you’ll need help sifting through the information. The Red Flag Decoder is a searchable database of 32 common patterns in college recruiting - things coaches say, behaviors to watch for, visit warning signs, financial red flags, and cultural signals. Just $25!

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You’ve probably thought a lot about whether coaches will call on June 15. You may not have thought as much about what happens when they do.

Most players prepare for that first call by thinking about what to say. What to answer when they ask about your hockey, your academics, your goals. That’s reasonable preparation. But it’s not what coaches are actually evaluating.

By the time a coach picks up the phone, she already knows your hockey. She’s watched you play. She’s reviewed your video. She has her notes. The call isn’t just an introduction - it’s a confirmation. She’s checking whether the person on the phone matches the player she’s been evaluating for the past year or two.

What she’s listening for isn’t information. It’s signals.

Can you hold a conversation?

Before any of the substance, there’s the small talk. How are you, how’s hockey going, did you have a good weekend?

Coaches are listening to whether the conversation flows or stalls. Whether you show a bit of personality or whether you’re so locked into performing well that you forget to actually be yourself.

A player who can warm up naturally, who laughs easily, who asks the coach a question back - that player is immediately easier to imagine in a locker room, on a bus, in a meeting room for four years.

A deer-in-the-headlights response doesn’t eliminate you. Coaches know this is hard. Talking to a near-stranger about your future, under pressure, with a lot riding on it - that’s not a normal Tuesday for a 16-year-old. Most adults would find it uncomfortable too.

But you’re not trying to do something normal. You’re trying to do something that 90 percent of high school athletes never do. That comes with a cost of entry, and part of that cost is learning to hold yourself together in uncomfortable conversations. The good news is that the more of them you have, the easier it gets.

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It’s June, and if you’re in the recruiting class of 2028, you’be been waiting a while for this month to roll around.

For some of you, the phone is going to ring on June 15. Maybe a lot. Maybe from programs you’ve been hoping to hear from for two years. That’s going to feel as good as you’ve imagined.

For others, it’s going to be quieter than you hoped. Maybe one or two calls from programs that weren’t at the top of your list. Maybe nothing at all from the school you’ve been dreaming about. Maybe just… silence.

This piece is for that second group. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’re probably not sure which group you’re in yet.

Interpreting the silence

Let’s start with what a quiet June 15 doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. It doesn’t mean your recruiting process is over. It doesn’t mean the last two years of work, travel, tournaments, and emails were wasted. It doesn’t mean you’re behind.

What it usually means is one of a few things, none of which are permanent.

You might be on programs’ lists but not at the top of them. Coaches contact their highest-priority recruits first. If a program is genuinely interested but has others they’re pursuing more urgently, you might not hear from them on June 15 itself - but you might hear from them in the days or weeks that follow.

You might be targeting programs that recruit on a different timeline. Some programs - particularly those with more resources and more certainty about their top targets - move fast. Others are more deliberate, waiting to see how their preferred conversations develop before expanding their list. A quiet June 15 from a program you want isn’t necessarily a no. It might be a not yet.

You might need to adjust your list. This is the harder one to hear, but it’s worth saying honestly. If June 15 passes and programs at your target level aren’t calling, that’s information. It doesn’t mean you can’t play in college. It might mean the level you’ve been targeting and the level coaches are placing you at aren’t aligned yet - and that’s something you can work with.

What the data actually shows

According to Allison Keefe at The Field Hockey Analyst, most D1 players commit in September of their junior year - not June. For D3, it’s the following June.

And in each of the last two recruiting classes, roughly 88-89 players committed to D1 programs after May 1st of their junior year, dispelling the myth that the D1 spots are gone in a matter of months. June 15 opens the contact window. It doesn’t close it.

The handful of players committing on June 15 or in the days immediately after are typically the ones who have done extensive campus visits, built deep relationships with programs over two years, and are ready to say yes the moment the call comes.

That’s a small group. Most recruiting happens in the months that follow - through the summer tournaments, the fall high school season, the official visit period that starts August 1.

If your phone is quieter than you hoped, you are in the majority. You are not behind.

What to do next

Don’t spiral. The worst thing you can do in the 48 hours after June 15 is sit with a quiet phone and let your brain construct a narrative about what it means.

Take stock of who did reach out. Even programs that weren’t your first choice are worth a real conversation. Sometimes the program you weren’t sure about becomes an option when you actually talk to the coaches. Don’t dismiss anything before you’ve given it a fair look.

Reach out to programs on your list that didn’t contact you. June 15 opens the contact window in both directions. If a program has been on your radar and you haven’t heard from them, you can email and express your continued interest. You can ask where you stand. The answer might be disappointing, but it’s better than spending the summer wondering.

Go back to your club coach. If June 15 was quieter than expected, this is the moment to have an honest conversation about where you’re at, what programs might be a better fit, and what the path forward looks like. A good club coach will tell you the truth.

Keep playing well. June 15 is not the last time coaches will watch you play. Summer tournaments are still ahead. The evaluation window doesn’t close because the contact window opened.

The tough stuff

Recruiting is hard in a way that’s difficult to explain to people who haven’t been through it. The uncertainty, the waiting, the trying to read signals from people who aren’t always being fully transparent — it takes a toll. And June 15 has a way of concentrating all of that into a single day in a way that isn’t entirely healthy.

Part of what makes a quiet June 15 hard isn’t just the silence - it’s watching other people’s noise. The commitment posts start going up. Your feed fills with announcements. It can feel like everyone is moving forward while you’re standing still. They’re not. They’re just louder.

Your athletic identity is not determined by how many coaches call you on one day in June. The players I’ve watched handle quiet June 15s well are the ones who treat it as a data point rather than a verdict - who adjust, keep working, and stay in the process long enough for it to play out.

Most recruiting stories don’t end on June 15. They’re usually just beginning.

If you want help navigating what comes next - whether that’s reading the signals from programs or communicating with coaches through the process - I have two $25 resources that can help:

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Gate 21. Flight to Los Angeles, then Sydney.

I’m heading to Australia with the USA Women’s National Hockey Team, and I’m still not entirely sure it’s real.

This time last year, I was finalizing a June 15 contact list.

And the year before that. And the year before that. Late May meant something completely different then - calling club coaches to confirm contact information for prospects, reviewing film on players I’d been tracking for two years, preparing what I was going to say on calls I’d been thinking about for weeks.

June 15 was a date I used to feel in my body. The countdown to it was its own kind of pressure - controlled, purposeful, but pressure nonetheless.

This year I’m at an airport gate instead, heading to the other side of the world with a video analysis bag and a role I still have to pinch myself about.

A few days ago, I had lunch with a friend who also recently stepped away from college coaching. We spent most of it the way you do when two people have left something behind - comparing notes on what we missed, what we didn’t, what surprised us about being on the outside of it.

There was a moment where we both got quiet, and then one of us said it.

“The one thing I’m not going to miss is recruiting.”

It landed the way true things do. We both laughed, and then we both sat with it for a second.

I want to be careful about how I say this, because recruiting is what you’re living right now. It’s real and it’s hard and the stakes feel enormous - because they are. I’m not dismissing that.

But from inside the machine, recruiting has its own particular weight.

The pressure of convincing someone to choose your program over someone else’s. The game-playing. The information you can’t share and the conversations you can’t quite have. The list-building that happens in rooms families never see. The long hours spent on hot sidelines making evaluations you won’t need in most cases.

Stepping out of that room changes how you see it.

June 15 is couple of weeks away. I know what that date feels like from where you’re sitting - the anticipation, the comparison, the questions you can’t answer yet. Will they call? When? What will they say? What happens if they don’t?

I’ve written about this date more times than I can count. The myths around it. The war room mechanics behind it. Why the calls you don’t get on June 15 aren’t the end of the story.

What I haven’t written - what I couldn’t have written until now - is what it feels like to watch it approach from the outside.

From inside the machine, the countdown to June 15 is a logistical problem. You’re managing lists, confirming contact information, and preparing talking points. The families on the other end of those calls are somewhat abstract - names in a database until the moment you hop on the Zoom.

Stepping out of that seat changes the view. The uncertainty families carry through this process - the not knowing, the waiting, the reading into every silence - is real in a way that’s easy to underestimate when you’re the one holding the list. It’s structural. Built into a process where both sides are operating with incomplete information, and the only thing that resolves it is time.

It’s also exactly why I’m not walking away from this newsletter. If anything, stepping out of college coaching clarifies why it matters. Everything I learned about how recruiting actually works - the list mechanics, the budget math, the language coaches use and what it means, the patterns families miss because they’ve never been in the room - none of that leaves with the job title.

I’ll keep writing about it. From a different vantage point now.

The video bag is packed. Australia and New Zealand are waiting.

And June 15 is coming - for you if not for me, this time around.

If you want help navigating what comes next - whether that's reading the signals from programs or communicating with coaches through the process - I have two $25 resources that can help:

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Get Emails Coaches Actually Read

June 15 is just under four weeks away. For current sophomores, that’s the date the phones start ringing - the first time D1 coaches can call you directly, and the beginning of what will feel like the most intense period of your recruiting process.

Some of those calls will be everything you hoped for. The coach knows your game, asks smart questions, and makes you feel like she’s been watching you for months. Maybe she texts you the next day. Maybe there’s a follow-up call. Maybe she mentions a visit.

And then, sometimes, a week or two later - nothing.

No text. Slower email responses. The energy that felt so clear on that first call has quietly disappeared. You’re not sure what happened, or if you did something wrong. You’re not sure whether to reach out or wait.

This piece is about why that happens, and what to do when it does.

The net both sides are casting

Before June 15, neither side has complete information.

Programs have been watching players at tournaments, reviewing video, building lists - but they don’t know for certain which recruits are genuinely interested in them, which will take their call, or which will ultimately want to commit. So some of them cast a wide net.

They might have a tier of eight to ten players they’re genuinely excited about, and another tier of ten to fifteen they’re keeping warm as options.

Recruits are doing the same thing. That’s why I talk about a funnel approach to ensure your list is both wide and deep enough, with good range across dream, reach, realistic, and safety categories. You don’t know who’s going to offer, so you stay engaged with multiple programs until the picture clarifies.

The problem is that when June 15 arrives and both sides start revealing their hands, the picture clarifies unevenly. A program might get strong early responses from three or four players they prefer in a particular tier. Their focus, their bandwidth, their energy - it all starts moving toward those conversations. The players slightly further down that tier experience a communication drop-off.

It’s not usually deliberate. It’s just what happens when humans have finite attention and a recruiting class to fill.

Coaches are running multiple tracks simultaneously, and the most organized programs have systems to manage communication across all of them. But even well-run programs let balls drop. And less organized ones drop them regularly.

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