During a recent player consultation, I had a discussion about the number of schools a recruit should contact. This player shared her list of about 30 schools that she had contacted and out of them, at least 20 of them were top 75 ranked DI programs and the other 10 were top 125 ranked. This particular player had an average score of 79 as a 2022 recruit. And while I am an advocate for having big goals to work hard to achieve and keeping some dream schools on your list, you just have to be cautious about what percentage of dream school vs realistic schools you have on your list.

In my recruiting checklist, I say to contact 50+ schools but as with many parts of this process that is dependent on many factors. The reason I use that number is for the average player who is doing this process on their own, without knowledgeable or reliable guidance, I have seen this same trend of what happens if they create a list of less than that.

When I am providing general advice and tips on steps of the process I am trying to consider what most players will tend to do and why they may not get the coach responses they are expecting. So if a player takes the time to initially contact 50 or more, then hopefully they expand their reach to include at least 15-20 realistic options in order to then have 7-10 programs that they can focus on. I certainly do not expect a recruit to maintain communication with that many coaches, just to initially cast a big enough net to generate enough interest to find the right fit.

Also, the better the player’s resume, the better odds they can keep their list small initially and still find those 7-10 programs to focus on, but without a really strong golf resume, the odds of contacting enough realistic options for most players is usually low and leads to frustration and lack of confidence.