Coronavirus cuts chance for high school recruits to showcase skill, talent to colleges

“I mean, it’s a difference between DI and now community college,” said Rancho Mirage softball coach Jeremy Ogden.

With the spring sports season cancelled due to coronavirus, the impact on high school athletes could last for years to come.

“Any kid that’s in the recruiting pipeline that hasn’t signed their National Letter of Intent, I think it could affect them, but it depends on the school,” said Shadow Hills softball coach JT Tiamula. “The NCAA seemed to put the onus on the school on how they were going to handle it. Money comes into play, roster spots come into play, all those things.”

“It’s just another year of exposure. It’s unfortunate for all spring athletes in the whole valley,” said Ogden. “I mean, there’s a lot of good seniors out here that needed just one more year to get looked at to possibly go DI.”

But for softball in particular, travel ball in the summer and fall is where the recruiting happens. 

“High school tends to be more… they get to play for their school, they get to have a lot of fun, the pressure’s not there,” said Tiamula. “It doesn’t affect the kids too much, but what does happen is that now we’re leaking this into the summertime, it could leak into the fall.”

And it’s not necessarily the seniors who will feel the greatest impacts on recruiting…

“The seniors, for the most part, that were going to go on to play in college, were already done,” Tiamula said. “But the freshmen, sophomores and juniors that are trying to get recruited, it’s going to be tough. Especially with the NCAA giving everybody a year, so now schools are going to have to shuffle around to figure out their rosters and find out if they’re going to have to redshirt kids if the seniors are coming back, there’s a lot of what if’s there.”

And the colleges are feeling the confusion too.

“They don’t know what’s going to go on, how long this is going to go on. I mean, they’re just hoping that the kids are staying active, doing what they need to do and it’s more of a keeping in touch type thing rather than a recruiting type thing,” said Ogden.

Showing positivity and support for their athletes is the best thing these coaches can do right now.

“I want them knowing that, one, we still care about them, and two, we still want them to get better and keep working on their craft,” Ogden said.