The rumor mill is (probably) lying to you
Why the intel circulating among your club's parents is almost certainly wrong, and why it doesn’t matter anyway
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.