Alex Swenson, a former D1 coach, breaks down the 2023-24 NCAA baseball recruiting calendar. Contact opens in July, a quiet period starts August 21, and coaches can contact rising juniors starting August 1. He explains when to attend tournaments versus camps and how to time your exposure for maximum impact.
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Hey, how you doing, Alex? Here, the new NCAA Division 1 baseball recruiting calendar just dropped. I wanted to get this in front of you because it can save us a lot of time, it can save us a lot of money, it can help guide and direct us through this college recruiting process of what we can and can't be doing. And this is for the remainder of 2023 and into 2024, all the way to July of 2024. I'm going to go over all of this, this and the color coordinations and what all this means, which is the quiet period, dead period, contact period and recruiting shutdown, which is new. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm A former Division 1 college coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is help high school baseball athletes and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and really put them in the best possible position to play at the next level. And if you get anything from this video, please smash that like button that thumbs up on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube and subs, subscribe, put out a weekly video on recruiting or development or anything like that to help us go through this process. And if you're on the podcast, please subscribe, put a review, share this with friends and families if they're going through the college recruiting process, because this can help. So with that said, let's go on and get into this right now. As of this recording, we are in July of 2023 and we are in the contact period. And what is the contact period mean? It means that college coaches can go out and watch players evaluate players have in person contact depending on the player's year. I'll talk a little bit about that here in a second. But they're out and about. They are out recruiting at tournaments, showcases. Some camps are during the contact period as well. So we are into that and it will go into. So we're in August 2023, which August is coming up. You might be watching this and you're in August, so just stay with me here as far as here. But we get into the quiet period on the 21st and why is that important? That is important to know. Make sure that if you're going to go out to tournaments or showcases that are during this time because believe it or not, for some reason some of them are, there is going to be no college coaches there, especially at the Division 1 and typically Division 2 level. There's no college coach is going to be there because they can't be there. Now, what is the quiet period? The quiet period basically means that college coaches cannot leave their campus to go out and recruit at tournaments or at showcases. They can only recruit on their campus at their camps. Okay? So they have to be hosting the camp for them to evaluate you and for them to watch you play. So that's the quiet period. That's here. We go back into contact period for about three weeks and then we go into the quiet period for a little bit while here, all the way through February. Now I'm going to rewind a little bit here and talk about August 1st and why this is a big deal especially for my upcoming junior. So guys that finished sophomore year going into junior year, August 1st now allows college coaches, they're allowed to now contact you, call you, text text you, talk to you, recruit you, offer you. Now of August 1, there are some kind of gray areas and all that, but the biggest change with these new recruiting rules is they couldn't offer you until August 1st and they can't necessarily contact you other than camps and things like that. And they can talk to you at their camps and showcases and things like that, but they can't offer you until August 1st. So this really starts heating up from a recruiting perspective August 1, especially for the juniors and even into guys that going into senior years really starts getting the thick of it now. One misconception about the new rules, it's like, alright, well, kids aren't being watched or recruited freshman and sophomore year, that is not the case at all. A lot of these coaches at the Division 1 level will watch. They can watch and they can evaluate the players that are freshmen or sophomores. And especially the bigger schools, they will do that. They just can't give any offers and they can't have specific recruiting talks with the players. But they're putting players on their watch list and radar list and vital, possibly offers list as well. So being active, especially if you're ready to be active in the recruiting process, you can go on and do that earlier. Even though offers don't come until August one going into your junior year, which honestly is a very healthy thing, it gives everybody a level playing field from a developmental, from a time perspective, which is really, really good. So I digress from there. We talked a little bit about that contact period, which we're going to stay in all the way until the 20th of August again, which is a lot of tournaments and even some showcases kind of shut down a little bit in August. But contact period just do not. If you're going for recruiting purposes. And you're looking for exposure tournaments during the quiet period. And in October, starting on 9th, no college coaches are going to be there from the Division 1, Division 2. So it's a waste of time and money and energy to do travel, ball or tournaments during the quiet period because again, no college coaches are going to be there. It is going to be worthwhile for you to attend camps during the quad period because college coaches are going to be there and will be able to evaluate you, talk with you, watch you play at their specific camps. They can only do that and that runs all the way through February. And then we get back into the contact period, March 1 and the dead period. Let's talk a little bit about the dead period. It's not the biggest deal, but basically they can't have any face to face contact with you during this time with the dead period. So they can't have you on campus or watch you off their campus. And then the recruiting shutdown here, the Purple, they can't have any recruiting talk to you on the phone, text with you, meet you face to face on campus or off campus. Nothing can be going on during the recruiting shutdown, which is the Purple. So I wanted to lay this out for you. If you're looking for this calendar, you want this calendar. It's on my premier athletes app as well. It's also on the NCAA website there. But this is good to follow. And if you have any questions, please comment down in the YouTube section or if you're on the podcast, please just reach out to me. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. Have a great day and good luck to you.
