Early Recruiting In Collegiate Athletics

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The Disadvantages of Early Recruiting in Collegiate Athletics
Samantha is an 8th grader on a very competitive club volleyball team. Since she was ten years old, Samantha has been on a club team that travels to various national tournaments in hopes of being noticed by college recruiters. Because of Samantha’s physical features and athleticism at such a young age, she has been noticed by many major collegiate volleyball programs, and has been given verbal offers three times before entering high school. She has visited many schools unofficially and has attended many college camps in hopes to impress college coaches around the country. When Samantha was offered college scholarships she was given a deadline to verbally commit to the college which …show more content…

As young athletes compete in their respective sports, they have dreams of competing at the highest level for the biggest collegiate programs and potentially going to play sports professionally. Merwhirter writes in his article:“You’re losing the joy of it because all of a sudden its become too competitive, its all you think about” (Mewhirter, 2015 p.18). The recruiting world has evolved into a competition between young athletes and coaches. Furthermore, one can assume that athletes now recognize how early their friends and classmates are being recruited, and are taking any necessary actions in order for them to get recruited as well. As the competition rises between coaches and universities,, the effects are shown through the athlete as they start to lose their love for the sport. Coaches have to start recruiting athletes early in order to keep up with competing universities (Lee, 2016). Although most college coaches believe that extremely early recruiting is unethical, some college coaches believe it is the only way to find the best athletes to compete for their university (Lee, 2016). As college recruiting has evolved, coaches are forced to keep up with the upcoming trends of recruiting despite their view on early recruiting. As a result, athletes are made more susceptible to discrepancies that happen in early recruitment. The few coaches that recruit extremely early force other competing schools to take early action on those recruits because of the desire for top caliber athletes to compete for their program. This constant competition creates more bewilderment for the athletes and lack of clarity in where they will continue their education. Early recruiting in collegiate athletics should not be allowed because its turns into a competition between universities and

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