The other side of the call
What June 15 looks like from the other end of the phone
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.
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