THE FOLLOWING IS AN EDITED VERSION OF AN ARTICLE APPEARING IN “LACROSSE MAGAZINE” FROM THEIR “RECRUITING U” SERIES: “TOO VESTED IN VERBALS?” WRITTEN BY BRIAN DELANEY IN THE NOVEMBER ISSUE OF LACROSSE MAGAZINE:
“Fear is probably the biggest reason,” Tambroni said. “With 57 programs and so many kids out there, the thinking is, ‘What will be left for me if I wait until tomorrow?’”
“…Roy Lang, a 6-foot-3 blue-chip midfi elder from St. Ignatius Prep (Calif.), chose the Big Red (Cornell) over Dartmouth and Duke before his senior year…”
http://www.uslacrosse.org/education/recruiting.phtml
Each year, Division I programs have a larger talent pool to recruit. Wait too long to make your decision, the thinking goes, and you get left out.
High school males and females alike can sign national letters of intent with their chosen university — excluding Ivy League institutions — during two “signing periods” in November and April, eff ectively bringing closure to the recruiting process.
But final decisions, in many cases, are made long before those signing periods commence, and a verbal commitment doesn’t mean the athlete’s recruitment necessarily ends.
Although his program won’t recruit a prospect who has verbaled elsewhere, Tambroni said he doesn’t blame other coaches for continuing their pursuit in those circumstances. He declined, however, to name specifi c examples.
“If you’re going to spend some time recruiting someone who’s already committed, then that’s your choice to budget your time down a lot of one-way streets that may not give you anything,” he said. “So you may be budgeting a lot of time that may be spinning your wheels. But sometimes it works out. It happened this summer, a number of times, where some schools recruited kids who were heading to other schools, and got them to change their minds.
“If a kid is wavering in her commitment, though, they call back,” he said. “They’ll call me and say, ‘If she’s wavering, let me know.’” Last spring, Tambroni didn’t have to worry about one of his prized recruits changing his mind. Roy Lang, a 6-foot-3 blue-chip midfi elder from St. Ignatius Prep (Calif.), chose the Big Red over Dartmouth and Duke before his senior year. Th e decision was not made without some anxiety. Would Lang gain admission to the university? What happens if he didn’t?
Would another program take him? Lang put his faith in the coaching staff . “I definitely trusted the coaching staff when they said I met the qualifications,” he said.
Lang said the early decision took the weight off his shoulders during his senior year. He added that the other coaches who recruited him didn’t pursue him once he broke the news of his decision to them.
“It was great,” he said. “Especially since some of my friends had that extra thing to worry about. You could tell they had to spend more of their time on college recommendations and just their overall stress.”
Lang said he felt comfortable committing verbally because of the trust built between him, his family and Tambroni.
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