Teenage athletes all over America work hard every day to achieve a common goal: play their sport at a higher level. Contacting coaches, going to camps, and playing on a club team can help an athlete continue on to compete on a college team. Potential college level athletes are tasked with making a choice that will impact their entire future, and that makes the recruiting 10 times more complicated. Making the choice to play college sports, and making the choice where to do so can be overwhelming when finding a program that fits the desires of the athlete. Here lies the underlying question: When does  recruiting start too early?

Many sports today have been embracing early recruiting, namely soccer, basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, and football. Coaches of these sports consistently go to youth games to see upcoming potential. Division one college athletic coaches are not allowed to reach out directly to players until September 1st of the athlete’s junior year, but loopholes when contacting  players allow coaches to verbally commit athletes even in middle school. Seventh graders, with brains and bodies that aren’t fully developed, are being approached with the choice that will impact their entire future education. As a junior, a lot can happen to a student athlete before graduating two years later. A serious concussion or a torn ACL could end a sports career forever. The athlete could decide they are burnt out and don’t want to play anymore. There could be a change in the coaching staff, and the new coach drops all commits.

Early commitment for girls is, in many ways, very different from early commitment from the boys. Girls, in most cases, develop sooner than boys, and are often full grown before the age of 14. This allows for coaches to see potential size and athleticism at a much earlier age than boys. Girls, on average, only grow about an inch throughout the high school years, and only gain about 5-9 pounds. A boy, when going into high school, averages around 5’5 inches in height and only about 115 pounds in weight , while a junior averages 5’9 inches tall and 145 pounds.  Three inches and thirty pounds could transform a player into the Division I athlete that a coach is looking for; but this is useless if a coach has already filled his spots for this athlete’s recruiting year.  Eight Colorado sophomores, as reported by CHAASA, have already verbally committed to play a Division One sport in college and only one of these eight athletes is male. UCLA already has a 2019 verbal commit, Lamelo Ball, for men’s basketball. Livie Cloutier, a 2020 high school graduate, verbally committed to play women’s soccer at Auburn University. A 2017 graduate committed weeks into her freshman year to play soccer at the University of Texas, but had offers at CU and Texas A&M to play, full ride.

Meghan Gordon, a Colorado sophomore, verbally committed to play Division I lacrosse at the Naval Academy just shy of starting her sophomore year. The difference with Haley Berg and Meghan Gordon is Gordon isn’t just making a four year commitment to a team, but a lifetime commitment to a career along with it. While a normal athlete has the stress of applying to a school like any other students, future military academy students have even more requirements to meet. College coaches have a heavy pull in the admission process, and so do those at the Academies, yet applying is still a tough process.

The recruiting process is scary enough to begin with, but as the number of young commits for athletes goes slowly up, the process become even more terrifying. Club and high school teammates of those who have already committed become jealous, or some even look to those for advice on what’s to come. For those who have committed already, the upcoming years are a blast. Many of those who have made the choice, are going to the school of their dreams, making the choice easy. Lamelo Ball will join his brothers at UCLA when the time comes. Meghan Gordon spent time with her new teammates at a camp, and interacts over social media. She will spend the next 3 years already developing friendships that will hopefully last a long time.

With many who feel early verbal commitments take stress off student athletes, but with many others who feel committing early can be harmful to the school and the athlete; the constant debate over college recruiting goes on. NCAA rules allow future Division I athletes to verbally make a decision for their future, and younger athletes along with coaches have been taking advantage of this. Many boys haven’t matured until junior year; while many girls do by the end of freshman year. Will coaches wait to see the full potential of all athletes or will they continue to sweep up young talent? Only time will tell.