KENT STATE Coach Linder resigns

[cork34]

I totally agree with Coach Linder on her statement:

Changes in recruiting methods have also been a major source of frustration for Linder.

"Right now everybody's in a hurry to get the next superstar, and we're offering kids scholarships when they're eighth and ninth graders, which I strongly disagree with," said Linder. "But you're put in a situation where if you don't get involved in the recruiting process with that kid when she's a freshman, you're not going to get her. I don't believe in that, and it's extremely frustrating to me."

This is where universities, NCAA, parents and players have totally lost sight of the more important item – Education. The questions I always see on younger players committing early: Are they fully developed as an athlete? Are they going to plateau and not get any better? Will the university live up to the commitment? I believe that these are good athletic questions but totally miss the point of the bigger question about the young person’s education and career after college.

This is a prime example where college athletics are now playing a bigger role, than education, in the universities agenda for female athletes. How many of these 8th / 9th graders that have a verbal commitment know what they will major in while attending the university? I can tell you from conversations with parents and players that have committed very early that they have no idea. The response is “Suzie is going to play softball at University “Y” and how many times they have been to the World Series”. I then ask does Suzie know what she wants to major in. The answer almost always is “It is a big university and she will find something that interests her”. This shows how the world is upside down and not focused on the best interest of the young female athlete. It is all about the Coach winning and fielding great players. The NCAA, universities and the coaches, in most cases, when it comes to your education they only are concerned about what is your current GPA, are you taking enough hours to qualify to play a sport and are you attending all of your classes. Generally they could care less about their major.

After the female softball player throws her last pitch, takes that last at bat, fields that last ball or makes that last out and graduates it all comes down to her degree and career from that point forward. Playing softball in college brings great memories and discussion points. But it does very little, if anything, for you in the business world. The NCAA says they represent the College Athlete. But they have dropped the ball around recruiting and the educational well being of female athletes. Hopefully Coach Linder can help make changes to the College Softball world and put these items back in order as they use to be and need to be.

 

[Heavy Hitter]

I am glad to hear she step down because of her principles. But, man how pissed is the administration at KSU, not even to thank her for her years a service and what she has done to build the program at KSU.

 

[Bill Bollinger]

I was reading the Linder discussion and the topic of Early Verbal's came up. This topic has been beaten to death, but it got me interested enough to do a little research. If someone had already done this recently, then I am sorry for bringing up the topic again. Here is data I pulled from Flo Softball:

Their site listed:

1,227 2014 Grads who submitted a verbal
1,437 2015 ...
1,050 2016 ...
518 2017 ...
149 2018 ...
24 2019 ...

Of course this data is ripe with inaccuracies. I am sure there are countless Sally's who are not being reported or being reported incorrectly. However, I believe the data to be reasonable enough to at least analyze. Because after looking at the data, I am not convinced there is an "Early Verbal" problem.

Things to ponder:

If we assume that on average D1 schools will be "signing" about 1,330 girls each year. Note: I get this number by taking the average of the most recent two grad years (2014 and 2015)(This number also seems within reason since there are 295 D1 softball schools nationally). This would then go on to say that of the 2019 class there has only been 1.8% of the ultimate signings within their grad class who have already verbally committed. Even for this years current Junior class (2017's) only 38.9 of the final class total has verbally committed. Based on my calculations there is still 20% of the 2016 class that hasn't made a commitment yet.

The numbers just don't jive with the debate in my opinion.

 

[BouldersDad]

The early verbal issue stems from the power 5 conferences being able to verbal an 8th grader and not a mid major D1. Mid D1 coaches feel slighted and rightly so that they are on the rear end of recruiting when it comes to getting the top athletes. Theres a reason the big schools can bring in an 8th grader and get away with a verbal. If that falls thru the sheer number of applicants looking to get to that college can normally fill that void. Not so with Mids.

Operation income. Look at teams like Mich, Bam. UT UK can spend on recruiting. Compare that to WSU, Kent state, Valpo. He'll Louisville probably spends more in the fall on recruiting than those 3 schools combined.

Now mix limited resources with entitlement based players, Helicopter parents ,any and all people that get butt hurt if their darling dd isn't treated just as they think she should be. Its no wonder she left. Coaches are asked to do more and more with less and less and to put up with all the other PC crap they have to swallow on a daily basis. I would think anyone wanting a coaching position at that level should have their heads checked.

The writing has been on the wall for years. She was actually smart enough to be able to read it.


Tim

 

[geowardjr]

Thanks for posting the article ...... Coach Linder has been one of the only coaches out there who had openly expressed her displeasure with the ever changing recruiting process.

When my girls started this journey, we had been lead to believe that the summer going into their "junior" year was the big recruiting year. The process was changing as we were wasting time playing on teams who played in weaker tournaments and not being exposed to college coaches. By the time we reached the summer leading into my oldest dd's junior year, we discovered that most of the larger D1 schools and a large amount of the smaller D1 schools had already finished with recruiting her class. Frustrating for sure. My DD looks at it as an athletic or skills failure ...... it truly is a timing failure. If anything, I have failed her by not getting her in front of coaches as a 8th and 9th grader.

Seeing how young ladies change physically from 8th to 12th grade, I am shocked by how many schools actually verbal 8th and 9th graders. We did have two schools mention that they are sticking with the process of recruiting at the later ages so that they are able to obtain a current view of their athletic abilities.

Best of Luck to Coach Linder! and everyone else out there chasing the athletic scholarship dream.

 

[tjsmize3]

The early verbal issue stems from the power 5 conferences being able to verbal an 8th grader and not a mid major D1. Mid D1 coaches feel slighted and rightly so that they are on the rear end of recruiting when it comes to getting the top athletes. Theres a reason the big schools can bring in an 8th grader and get away with a verbal. If that falls thru the sheer number of applicants looking to get to that college can normally fill that void. Not so with Mids.

Operation income. Look at teams like Mich, Bam. UT UK can spend on recruiting. Compare that to WSU, Kent state, Valpo. He'll Louisville probably spends more in the fall on recruiting than those 3 schools combined.

Now mix limited resources with entitlement based players, Helicopter parents ,any and all people that get butt hurt if their darling dd isn't treated just as they think she should be. Its no wonder she left. Coaches are asked to do more and more with less and less and to put up with all the other PC crap they have to swallow on a daily basis. I would think anyone wanting a coaching position at that level should have their heads checked.

The writing has been on the wall for years. She was actually smart enough to be able to read it.


Tim

Tim I am in complete agreement with you here. I have the utmost respect for Karen as a coach and had the opportunity to talk to her about her dislike for where the recruiting trend is heading quite a while ago (4+ yrs ago when DD was in her recruiting years). I never really got the impression that her issues were about causing harm to the kids with schools offering verbals in 8-9th grade, but rather, when you coach at a school like KSU (mid major) it really creates an unequal playing field against the bigs. You touched on the basics of why. This is only my opinion, but I would guess that one could get a little bitter with having less and less of a true talent pool to work with each year (due to earlier recruiting by the bigs) and then feeling compelled to maybe have to start taking more and more kids who displayed above average softball talent, but came with problems like difficult parents and coachability issues. I'm sure in the vast majority of the mid-major recruiting pool it RARELY looks like a great idea to offer verbals in 8th grade. Again, pure speculation here, but I wonder if maybe Karen didn't talk to the AD about what she felt she needed from the school to continue to run the program at her standards and just couldn't get what she was looking for???
Regarding some of the other comments about early recruiting not being good for the kids... I would have to say I really have never heard a good argument as to why. Sure, a school can take away a verbal, but I've never seen any real evidence that this happens to kids at a higher rate for those who commit early. I saw 2 committed kids I know loose scholarships in the DD's day due to coaching changes, neither committed before 10th grade. The fact is that most schools DO honor the commitment that they make to these kids, but the kids DON'T always honor the commitment they make to the schools! The schools are the ones taking the biggest risk offering up a spot so early. Secondly, you can argue that an 8th grader doesn't really know what she wants to do with the rest of her life, what she wants to major in, etc... but is just committing only to play softball in school and get her education paid for... GOOD FOR HER!!! How many 12th graders tell you what they want to do and what they are going to major in ONLY to change their mind 5 times in college? DD committed to her school for a number of reasons that are no longer important to her in her Junior year. But... she still loves softball and still appreciates that tuition credit each year!
If you want to argue that there needs to be reform in the recruiting world to close the gap a little between the mids and the bigs then fine... but if you're on the side that universities are hurting families and kids by offering in 8th and 9th grade to pay upwards of $100,000 - $200,000 for their education and the chance to play softball at the highest level, I'm going to need to see some real evidence of that. Time will tell I guess.

 

[WalkOffHR]

Don't let your daughters grow up to be softball coaches. That is going to be one impossibly difficult job if this is happening now!

 

[Coco Montoya]

From the article: "When I first started coaching kids wanted to play, and they looked at you as a leader. If you told kids to do something, they would do it because they trusted that it was going to help them get better," said Linder. "Now when you tell a kid to do something, some of them need three reasons why they need to do it this way. It's a world of entitlement, and I've struggled with that."

Linder is absolutely right on the money with this statement. Add in the parent factor, especially at the high school level, and it's easy to see why coaching softball is not what it used to be.

 

[BouldersDad]

Big foot, UFO,s, Full rides and now verbaling 8th graders. No one can prove they truly exist but they swear they have seen them. If a kid verbals in the 8 th grade she is probably less than 1/2 OF 1% of every softball player in the US. You would have to be a total natural phenom. If and when a kid that age is verbaled it is far and few between.

My daughter who is now a student coach at Louisville called me saying they were bringing in an 8th grader for a visit and she asked..... what the hell am I supposed to do with an 8th grader? My reply was to take her to chucky cheese and call it a day.

To much is made of an early verbal. The early verbal in no way hurts a kid. What it hurts is the pride of competing kids parents.

Tim

 

[WalkOffHR]

Technically every verbal is an early verbal. It's just as contractually meaningless in September of a players Senior year as it is in the 8th grade. Nothing but the National Letter of Intent binds either the player or the school.

 

[WWolff]

Technically every verbal is an early verbal. It's just as contractually meaningless in September of a players Senior year as it is in the 8th grade. Nothing but the National Letter of Intent binds either the player or the school.

I think we all understand that, but it is rare that schools do not honor them. One reason they may not though is sometimes when there is a coaching change.

 

[tjsmize3]

Technically every verbal is an early verbal. It's just as contractually meaningless in September of a players Senior year as it is in the 8th grade. Nothing but the National Letter of Intent binds either the player or the school.

I probably would avoid playing for a coach if I truly felt their word was meaningless since the NLI is good for 1-year only. After the first year your back to a "verbal agreement" basis with the coach that each year they will honor the original commitment made to you back before you signed your NLI.

 

[WalkOffHR]

No argument with either of the previous 2 posts. I was just pointing out that calling a verbal an "early" verbal would suggest that there are 2 types.

We have seen about 5 coaching changes in or very near Ohio (if you include NKU) this summer at the D1 and D2 level. Allegedly Kent is honoring their offers, albeit they didn't have many verbals. It's hard to say if all 5 schools that had changes bound their new coaches to the verbals that their predecessors committed to before their departures. That is the real risk in a verbal. I agree, coaches rarely go back on a verbal.

 

[JoeA1010]

Kent State, BG, NKU, Malone, Findlay, Urbana and even Ball State all had changes.

 

[WWolff]

Know this maybe a touchy subject for you but.Do you take into consideration some of values of parents,maturity of the players, beyond the skill set when getting kids on Outlaws teams to make your help on finding interest and helping your kids in the recruiting process?Maybe too much for a public forum and more suitable in different thread,will completely understand.

Absolutely I do, and my coaches follow the same views. No different then college. We have not offered some very talented young ladies because of there attitudes, and there parents attitudes. I know some organizations do not care about this but to us it matters. We have also parted ways with girls because of their attitudes or the character of their parents once they were part of the organization. It all matters to us!

 

[okiedad1961]

Absolutely I do, and my coaches follow the same views. No different then college. We have not offered some very talented young ladies because of there attitudes, and there parents attitudes. I know some organizations do not care about this but to us it matters. We have also parted ways with girls because of their attitudes or the character of their parents once they were part of the organization. It all matters to us!

Thanks Warren, I would hope that the orgs that don't care would,so we could make the game better for all of us.

 

[Hilliarddad3]

Just read her article and She hit her last at bat out of the park. The entitlement starts with mom and dad. When ours played we told them you play the way that coach you are playing for at the time wants you to play, regardless of what off season coach told you.

NCAA athletes think their playing is equal to a job I get it, but it will be interesting to see if suspended Buckeyes are on the sidelines. Not sure about you all, but at our work, if you're suspended, you aren't allowed at work........if you entitle them at any level, you are feeding the monster.....

 

[SoCal_Dad]

I probably would avoid playing for a coach if I truly felt their word was meaningless since the NLI is good for 1-year only. After the first year your back to a "verbal agreement" basis with the coach that each year they will honor the original commitment made to you back before you signed your NLI.

No longer true. Multi-year NLIs have been allowed since 2012 for the 2013 grads.

 

[Linedrive21]

Absolutely I do, and my coaches follow the same views. No different then college. We have not offered some very talented young ladies because of there attitudes, and there parents attitudes. I know some organizations do not care about this but to us it matters. We have also parted ways with girls because of their attitudes or the character of their parents once they were part of the organization. It all matters to us!

.....Very well stated...

 

[tjsmize3]

No longer true. Multi-year NLIs have been allowed since 2012 for the 2013 grads.

Saw that SoCal, but have been down with the younger ages since 2013. None of the 2013 grads I was familiar with were offered multi-year NLIs to my knowledge (including DD)... are you seeing this with a large percentage of signings now?