How College Coaching Changes Can Impact Recruiting

Coaching changes happen every summer across college sports.

And for high school athletes navigating the recruiting process, it can be confusing.

You may have already:

• Sent film

• Had conversations with a coach

• Visited campus

• Received an invitation to an elite camp

• Completed an academic pre-read

• Even received a D3 offer

Then the entire coaching staff changes.

What happens next?

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Then: He was born in Jamaica and didn’t pick up a basketball until middle school.

Now: He still scored 2178 points in college and is playing professional basketball

Listen to D.J. Campbell’s inspiring story in this week episode of the Student Athlete Sessions Podcast.

Here’s a real example of how coaching changes at the D3 level can impact recruits. To protect the recruit, who was a 1:1 client, and coaches involved, we’ve anonymized the schools.

Here’s what happened:

School A’s coach left for School B, so they named an interim Head Coach.

That coach had already been recruiting a high school athlete and had expressed interest in her.

Previously, School B’s coach left for School C - who’s Coach had stepped down.

Now the athlete had gone from being recruited by one coach to potentially being evaluated by an entirely new staff.

This is a great example of how college recruiting isn’t always a linear process.

A coach changing jobs doesn’t necessarily mean your opportunity disappears.

But it can mean you need to re-establish the relationship or re-iterate your interest in playing for them at the new school.

Here are examples of what recruits can do depending on what stage of the recruiting process they’re at with each coach or school.

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The impact depends on how far along you are in the recruiting process.

Here are four different stages of the process and what to do at each one if you encounter a coaching change.

This is the least concerning scenario.

Your recruiting process probably wasn’t dependent on one coach yet.

What to do: Introduce yourself to the new staff and restart the conversation. If you were already getting recruited by them at another school or they saw you at a camp, make sure to mention it to help remind them that they’re already familiar with your game.

This is where things get more complicated.