Somewhere on your list right now, there’s a school you haven’t emailed in a while.
Maybe the coach went quiet after a promising start. Maybe you let the communication drift while you were focused on other programs. Maybe you hoped they’d reach out on June 15 and they didn’t, and now it feels too late and too awkward to try again.
So you haven’t. And the longer you don’t, the harder it feels to start.
The two things that stop families
The first is pride. If a program hasn’t been in consistent contact, or went quiet after some early interest, reaching back out feels like admitting you’re not among their top targets.
A lot of well-intentioned recruiting advice says to “go where you’re wanted” - which is intended to stop people only chasing dream schools that will never love them back. But it’s trickier when it’s a school you’ve already been in contact with, or think you have a genuine shot at, but things haven’t progressed.
The second is fear. By the time a recruit is considering restarting a cold trail, she’s probably already been rejected or ghosted by multiple programs. Putting herself out there again means risking the same thing happening again. It’s not irrational, it’s the accumulation of a process that asks you to absorb disappointment and keep trying anyway.
Both of these are normal human responses in my eyes, and feeling them doesn’t make you crazy or wrong.
But that doesn’t mean either of them should stop you.
The story you’re telling yourself
One of the pieces of advice I most regularly give to athletes in a whole variety of challenging situations is to “talk to yourself, don’t listen to yourself”.
Listening to yourself is when that weak voice we all have in our head starts to get your attention and dominate your thought process. It says things like:
“They don’t want me”
“I’ll just seem desperate”
“What’s the point?”
That voice is going to find eight different reasons not to send the email.
Talking to yourself is something different. It’s when you acknowledge the discomfort - yes, this is awkward, yes, this might not work - and then decide to act anyway, because the alternative is just leaving a door unopened that might not have been closed.
There are endless reasons a recruiting trail might have gone cold, especially at this time of year.
The coach that was prompt and engaged with communication earlier in the summer might now be drowning in the demands of the fall season.
The party responsible for making the next step might have been unclear after the last contact, and both sides are waiting on the other.
Things might have progressed faster with other recruits, so their communication with you dropped off.
You might have been mostly talking to an assistant coach who hasn’t done a good enough job of advocating for you with their boss.
Their roster math might have changed.
It’s easy to end up going around in circles about why it might be - it happens on almost every consulting call I do. In the absence of information, there is speculation.
I generally keep coming back to the same advice - we could keep trying to figure out why, or we could just make them say no. Write the email. Get to their clinic. Get in front of them.
That’s the reframe. Not “why haven’t they reached out?” but “have we actually made it impossible for them to ignore us?”
What this costs you
The frustration of a recruiting process that hasn’t gone the way you hoped and is stalled out is fair.
The time, the tournaments, the investment of energy and money… of course you feel like it should have produced more by now.
But here’s the thing about the email you haven’t sent: it will take you ten minutes or less to write. The cost of trying - of restarting a trail that went cold, of following up on a school that went quiet, of asking directly whether there’s still a conversation to be had - is almost zero.
The cost of not trying is a door you never find out was open.
The worst that happens is you get a no. This is actually useful information, because it closes the door cleanly and lets you focus somewhere else.
The best that happens is a conversation restarts.
Either outcome is better than the ambiguity you’re sitting in right now.
And If they ghost you again after a direct question like this, and you get no response at all, there’s a signal in that too - it’s certainly time to move on.
The only thing left to do
If there’s a school on your list you haven’t contacted in a while - one you’re still genuinely interested in - the question isn’t whether to reach out. It’s what to say.
Thursday’s paid issue will give you exactly that: how to restart a cold trail, how to freshen your approach with something specific and current, and what the email actually looks like when you write it well.
For now: don’t listen to the voice. Talk back to it.
My Strategy Sessions are back - one hour, three topics of your choosing, direct help with your recruiting process, or anything else in your hockey life that you might need a second set of eyes for. Book via the link below or email hi@alangood.com for more details!