Almost all major colleges recruit from select organizations. When you start attending national championship caliber tournaments around the country the recruiters buzz around like honey bees to the flowers. Let me be clear that there are a lot of crappy select softball teams because anyone who can pay money will be on a team somewhere regardless of ability. The team my daughter played on is not that type of team. You are right that there are a lot of politics on some teams, but at the highest level of select softball the expectation is everyone gets a scholarship offer...period. It is so difficult to get on those teams once you finally get on the expectation can't be lowered. Not all are D-1 players, but they all go to competitive programs. I don't know anything about soccer, volleyball, etc or how they are run.
I am yet to see a top quality high school player who is good enough to play on a D-1 team who does not play select ball. I'm sure they exist somewhere, but I haven't seen it. Maybe many have the potential, but most D-1 programs don't recruit on potential....there just aren't enough scholarships to take that chance. Once in high school you can't possibly be developed enough to play at this level without playing outside of HS softball at an elite level with lots of private lessons, etc. There are a LOT of bad high school teams out there and the competition isn't difficult enough to develop great players, especially batting skills. The bigger HS teams that are really good are usually loaded with select players who play year round.
I'm not sure how you got scholarship offers out of the letter I wrote because my comments had nothing at all to do with scholarships or offers. It was all about the perception of the UT organization from those elite clubs based on coaching behaviors.
Texas can offer all they want, but the perception of the majority of players and parents is that UT is a joke and we will never have a shot at those players. The players we get are kids who we settled on, but may not be the exact player we wanted because the one we wanted ended up at a serious program like OU.
Last edited: Apr 29, 2018