UPDATED 7/27: Baseball is the most recent sport to make some changes to its recruiting calendar at the Division I level. Communication with younger student-athletes in the recruiting process is now limited more than ever before. Keep in mind these rules are strictly for college coaches, student-athletes have no communication rules and should be continuing to reach out to college coaches,

The recruiting rule change that is going into effect today is specifically changing the date of when student-athletes can have recruiting-like conversations with college coaches. As stated in the Bylaw 13.1.1.1 “Time Period for Off-Campus Contacts — General Rule. Off-campus recruiting contacts shall not be made with an individual (or the individual’s family members) before August 1 at the beginning of the individual’s junior year in high school. ” – LSDBI With this new rule change the contact period has changed from September 1st to August 1st for rising juniors.

Other things that have changed are:

  • College coaches must ask a student-athletes age when they answer an incoming call. They are not able to have recruiting-like discussions during inbound calls anymore (similar to women’s lacrosse and softball).
  • College coaches will no longer be able to send out offers prior to August 1st of a student-athletes junior year. A big issue in baseball recruiting was student-athletes were receiving offers as 8th-9th graders and verbally committing to that school. That would limit the number of offers available to other student-athletes or verbal offers were being pulled after a student-athlete didn’t progress the way the college anticipated.
  • Colleges can no longer work or recruit at all during the NCAA recruiting dead periods.

Why is the NCAA Division I Council Changing the Recruiting Rules?

The reasoning behind this major change in NCAA DI college baseball recruiting is to eliminate student-athletes getting recruited too early on in their process. This will help those student-athletes who may have been asked to make huge life decisions about their recruiting process as early as 8th or 9th grade. These rule changes will halt early commitments from student-athletes from even being possible.

What Should You Be Doing as a Potential Baseball Recruit Right Now?

If you are a currently 2023 or 2024 grad-year high school baseball student-athlete, these rules changes will not affect your recruiting process. If you are in the class of 2025 or younger, this rule change does not impact you from being able to send emails updating college coaches about the progress you are making as a prospective student-athlete. It simply impacts how college coaches are able to respond, limiting them to sending you information about upcoming camps they are hosting, or links to their recruiting questionnaires.

Although how college coaches can respond will be limited, making sure your SportsRecruits profile is up to date is now more crucial than ever before. Making those updates publicly available will now be imperative to get on the radar of college coaches. Keeping your social media updated will also be a great way to announce any updates you are making to your profile, as well.

How Can SportsRecruits Help?

As these limitations of recruiting communication strengthen, it’s important to note that there are no rules that limit student-athletes from communicating with college coaches. This means that keeping your SportsRecruits profile up-to-date, as well as sending emails to college coaches is still a great way to take control of your own recruiting process.

Tips to Make Sure Your Profile Has Everything College Coaches Want to See

  • Have the most up-to-date video on your profile– The most requested piece of information from college coaches is updated videos. Uploading video to your profile is extremely easy on SportsRecruits, whether it is in-game clips (i.e. gamechanger) or skills videos of you working on your hitting, fielding, or pitching.
  • Add any relevant academic information to your profile– Every student-athlete must be academically accepted to the school that they plan on competing. Uploading a transcript is a great way to keep college coaches in the know about the progress you have made in your classes to confirm that you’re on track with the college’s academic requirements.
  • Get your events section updated on your profile– The summer season is typically a very busy time in the baseball recruiting world. You should take the time to add any events to your profile such as tournaments, showcases, and prospect camps.
  • Be Proactive– The best way to make any of the above information available to college coaches is to send an email with anything new you want them to know about. Our Built-In Messaging System makes it easy as can be to contact any college coaches with your new information. Here is a sample email to a college coach to get a better feel of the format of what an introductory email should look like.