So much of the recruiting process is a parallel between recruits and coaches. It amazes me how many times I hear players get frustrated because a coach never replies back, yet when a coach at a school they’re not interested in emails them, they won’t reply to them.

Yes, the coaches are the adults and have more experience in the recruiting world, but they’re human too and get frustrated when they email a player and never get a response.  Just as you would rather at least get a response, even if it’s a “not interested” one, so would the coaches. It takes less than 2 minutes to write a polite response.

So if a coach sends you an email and you’re 100% not interested then just let them know you don’t think it’s a good fit for what you are looking at with golf and school.

If you don’t know much about the school or program, take the time to do some research and reply back to ask the coach some questions. I never encourage players to waste a coach’s time but don’t eliminate or reject options if you don’t have some good solid interest from your top choices or don’t bother to at least do some research and consider it. You also never know what you may find out or the experience you may gain from a coach connection.

I had a player not interested in a program but I encouraged her to at least give the coach a nice response back to say why, a few months later that coach ended up at a better program and because the player had shown some respect and courtesy that coach reached out to her and ended up offering her a scholarship to play at an ACC/SEC program.