Committing to a coach and program will be one of the most exciting and proud achievements of your life. It can also be a pressure-filled situation, as many coaches will begin to put pressure on you at some point during the recruiting process to get you to commit on their schedule, and not your own.
In the moment, you may feel like you don’t want to lose an opportunity — and realistically, some coaches may tell you there are two (or three, four, five) equally talented players that the coaches are interested in signing but only one scholarship left and ready for the first taker.
The decision is ultimately yours, and use your best judgement based on the number of opportunities that are coming your way. But overall, it’s best not to commit to a program unless you are happy and excited about the opportunity. One of the toughest things to do is to go back and decommit a few months down the road or to actually enroll in the school, only to transfer in a year or two.
If a school is genuinely interested in signing you and you’re dealing with a quality coach, they will wait as long as they need to for your commitment, and for you to be entirely comfortable in the situation. A great coach who really wants you for their program won’t likely pressure you to do something you’re not entirely comfortable with.
And lastly, in order to commit to a program you must have a legitimate scholarship offer. I’ve worked for programs and received calls from prospects who called to commit, who hadn’t yet been offered scholarships — only receiving mail. You have to understand where you are in the process and how serious a coach is about signing you — just because you are receiving mail or a questionnaire, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are in scholarship consideration right now.
