June 15 is less than a month away.
If you're a rising junior, this is when college coaches can finally contact you directly.
Some will email at midnight. Some will text first thing in the morning. Some will reach out days or weeks later.
But in these final weeks, it's not your highlight video, emails, or tournament schedule that will determine your success.
It's your mindset.
The Mental Barriers Most Never Overcome
As the countdown intensifies, these mental traps ensnare countless recruits:
External Validation Seeking
Most players measure their worth by:
- How many coaches contact them
- Which programs show interest
- When they get their first offer
- What others think of their process
This desperate need for validation turns recruiting into a performance for others, not a journey for yourself.
The mental shift required: Become ruthlessly self-referential.
Your recruiting success isn't determined by how it looks to others.
It's determined by how well it aligns with what YOU actually want.
The Preparation Paradox
When the clock starts ticking, most players become paralyzed by:
- "Am I ready?"
- "Have I done everything I could?"
- "What if I've missed something?"
- "What if I'm not good enough?"
This anxiety spiral leads to scattered efforts, last-minute panic, and ineffective preparation.
The mental shift required: Embrace strategic incompleteness.
You will never feel fully prepared. You won't have the perfect answer to every question a coach asks, or the perfect plan for every scenario in your process.
Accept it. Then focus on the few things that move the needle.
The Practical Priorities That Matter
While mindset forms your foundation, these practical steps build your readiness:
List Refinement
Now is the time for brutal honesty about your list:
- Is every school on it truly a good fit?
- Have you researched each program thoroughly?
- Does the school have your major, or area of study interest?
Use these final weeks to either deepen your knowledge or remove schools that aren't priorities for you. We'll dig into this a little more in next week's issue.
Knowledge Building
Every year, I get on opening calls with recruits who've been writing emails for years, but are stumped when I ask them what they know about the school I coach at.
That's not the first impression you want to give.
The post-June 15 recruiting process is supposed to help you find out things about the school and program you can't just look up online.
But if you don't know the basics about the school, you may never get to that point, as you're sending a signal to the coach that you're not interested.
So ensure you know the basics - location, size, setting, plus an idea of the field hockey program's trajectory over the last couple of years.
Now it's up to the coach to fill in the gaps!
One Thing That Works
It sounds simple, but if you haven't already, add some columns to the spreadsheet you keep your list on, and fill them in for each school:
- Size (number of students)
- Setting (rural, town, city, state, distance from home etc)
- 3-Year Record (e.g. 13-5, 7-10, 12-6, Conference Champs 3 years ago)
You don't need to memorize all this, but you can have it to hand to brief yourself before any calls you (hopefully!) set up with these schools.
Reality Check
You can't control which coaches call on June 15. You can't control how many programs reach out. You can't control what others experience.
But you can control your mindset, your preparation, and how you respond to whatever unfolds.
These three weeks determine not just your first impression, but your ability to navigate the entire process with clarity and confidence.
🚨 Class of 2027 🚨 - This week, I'm launching The Commitment Countdown, a 75-minute video course with actionable frameworks for navigating coach conversations, decoding true intentions, and confidently handling offers.
🔑 Access The Commitment Countdown for $39
Weekly issues of The Recruiting Roadmap, such as this post, will always be free. However, if you would like to support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which also gives you access to additional premium posts and Q&As!
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