Early signing period commences for seniors
Today marks the first-ever early signing period for high school seniors looking to get the recruiting process out of the way, and it will provide different aspects for different people.
Some players will sign over this three-day period starting today and enroll next month and start classes.
Others will sign yet finish their senior year of high school before making the trek for summer classes to get acclimated to the college life.
The rest of the players will finish out the recruiting process and sign in February.
But one group of people that will be affected but have not been talked about is assistant coaches. In the past, assistant coaches are usually fired right after the season as head coaches look to go in different directions.
Head coaches would hire new assistants and they would hit the recruiting trail hard trying to keep commits on board despite getting rid of coaches who may have recruited them to a certain school.
Having spoken to a few coaches, they feel coaches were not fired right away because of the limited time between the end of the season and the early signing period as new coaches would not be able to build relationships with recruits.
Greg McElroy of SirusXM蘑菇视频 college football morning show titled 鈥淭he First Team鈥� spoke last week about how he has heard the same thing from college coaches.
He also spoke about how with a tenth coach being hired at each school, the amount of coaching turnover is going to be astronomical.
Looking at it from another perspective, there will be college assistant coaches who will leave their current jobs for a position elsewhere shortly once the assistant coaching carousel picks up shortly.
These coaches, if they know they will be leaving school 鈥淎鈥� for school 鈥淏,鈥� have been recruiting kids to school 鈥淎鈥� by building a relationship with them but will be leaving.
So while helping the school they are leaving, they are basically lying to these recruits who are trusting these coaches with their future.
Yet another aspect to look at is if big-time programs will keep a scholarship on the table if current verbal commits don鈥檛 sign today through Friday.
Will schools pull offers off of the table or keep working the players?
The biggest winners in this will be players who may be considered mid-major recruits, but may gain interest from major programs when other prospects sign elsewhere.
Regardless, it is expected that between 50 and 90 percent of major recruits will sign by Friday night at 11:59 p.m.
I will touch on the recruiting classes for Penn State, Pitt and West Virginia next week.
Local Point Park athletes
Junior Kenny Sickles (Laurel Highlands) has played in all 11 of the men蘑菇视频 basketball team蘑菇视频 games and is averaging 1.6 points per game, while a pair of freshmen, Sierra Dawson (Elizabeth Forward) and Abbey Davis (Connellsville), are on the women蘑菇视频 team.
Dawson is averaging 1.6 points in six games played, while Davis is averaging 2.5 points per game thus far in the two games she has appeared.
The women蘑菇视频 team is 7-6 overall and 2-2 in River States Conference (RSC) play, while the men蘑菇视频 team is 4-9 overall and 1-3 in RSC play.
In other Point Park news, the university made the first page of the leaderboard in the Learfield Directors鈥� Cup NAIA Fall standings which were released on Dec. 14 by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA).
Point Park scored 90.0 points during the fall sports season.
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