Mates,

A number of you have said you appreciate the handful of recruiting posts I've put up over the last year or so, and with that encouragement I submit what is likely the last in the series:  The Commitment.  

**Warning:  some humble-bragging will be encountered. **

The Background: This one is for our 2021 son.  He has a junior Hudl tape that Magnus was nice enough to look at and opine that he was a 'tweener' (my words, paraphrasing) with D-1 and D-2.  That said, he is still growing and the definition of a 'rising senior' - he is now a hair shy of 6' 3", 192 lbs. with barely a nanogram of fat, has a 4.69 40, a 32" vertical and there are zero fakes out of 5 for these numbers.  All-conference, All-region, captain, yada, yada.  The kid can play and absolutely loves the game and the weight room. 

He has had interest and/or offers from schools all over the map in terms of D-1, D-2, D-3, and NAIA (FYI, NAIA schools can offer scholarships and most would rank in the D-2 area of performance).   For D-1 he had interest that he did not return for a few MAC schools and at least one Ivy league school.  One B10 team in particular is interested in this son (asked for his test scores earlier this week) but he didn't want to wait on them as he has always said he'd prefer a smaller school and faith is a big deal for this son, too, so that figures into the mix.  

The Parent(s): The parents.  Oh the parents.  I can't tell you how hard this is for the parents, or at least for us.  Dear wife and I had a definite #1 choice but we did our best to bite our tongues day in and day out about what we wanted.  This son knew what our preference was but beyond that we did our level best to keep our mouths shut.  This might sound easy, but it's not.  And because we didn't question dear son about the details of his decision making, when he'd know, who was leading, etc., we were flying 'blind', so to speak.  We wanted the son to make his choice on his terms and for his reasons.  

The Commitment:  We had prior visits to this school but the last visit was the official visit.  In prior visits we'd met with the head coach and the position coaches who would be this son's coaches.  They played tape and showed the exact position which they foresaw for this son, described what they ran, some of the calls they make, and of course the comments about this son was their top choice for that position, how 'perfect' he'd be, and the normal nice talk you'd expect.  

So for the official visit son was paired up with another player, a junior, from his position group to hang out with for an afternoon/overnight/morning.  That kid was very cool and I had to laugh when he and son were talking about what to do in the morning and son asked if they could work out.  So instead of some visits at some colleges (and I did this at Michigan) where the recruits are shown a wild time, this one was much more tame, met some of the guys and just hung out.  And yes, they worked out in the morning.  

Cutting to the chase somewhat, son and I had lunch with the Provost, son had a really nice talk with him about academics, and then the two of us go to the head coach's office.   Some small talk and Coach eventually asks, 'So what questions do you have, what will it take for you to make a decision, where are you in the process?'  And son responds with a phrase I'll not likely ever forget: "I'm ready to be a [mascot name]"   Having not anticipated this response, or even a definitive decision, I had a hard time keeping it together for a minute - this is/was our (the parents) top choice but because we'd sworn off asking son about his favorites or decision timeline or all of that, it was a wonderful, joyful surprise to me.  Son is really pleased with his choice.  In our debriefing this evening he says that he'd figured it out for certain in the last week or so.  I am so happy for him, great school, great opportunity.   

One other side note:  son called or texted all the schools he'd gotten offers from when we got home.  He has not made any type of public announcement as he wanted to reach out to those coaches first.  I am glad he handled it that way.  

I hope you enjoyed the reading and that, for some of you with sons or daughters that are jocks and might want to play at some level in college, there was some helpful information in all of this.  If nothing else, I hope you get the chance to participate in the process with your child(ren) and are as stoked about their choice as we are. 

XM