When the Plan B Disappears: Talking Honestly About Recruiting Expectations

The conversation nobody wants to have

Two years ago, the plan made sense. Your kid was trending up, the target list had a few reach schools, a solid middle, and a couple of safe options at the bottom. Everyone assumed the bottom of that list was guaranteed.

Now it is junior or senior year. The level has not moved the way we all hoped. The reach schools stopped answering a while ago. And the schools that were supposed to be the safety net are not interested either.

I have this conversation with families every recruiting cycle. I also had it from the other side of the desk for 11 years as a Division I head coach. So let me be honest with you, because honesty right now is worth more than comfort.

"They're better than their UTR"

I hear some version of this almost every week:

•      "They practice with players rated two points higher and hold their own."

•      "They just have bad luck in tournaments."

•      "Their UTR doesn't show how good they really are."

•      "Once a coach sees them hit, they'll get it."

I understand why parents believe it. You watch practice. You see the great sets against stronger players. You know your kid works hard. But here is what a college coach is thinking when they hear that.

Practice is not a match. Everyone looks good in practice. There is no score that matters, no nerves, no opponent trying to find your weakness for two hours. College coaches recruit players who win when it counts.

The UTR is the match results. It is not a judgment of talent or effort. It is a record of what happened when your kid played real opponents in real matches. If the rating says one thing and practice says another, the rating is telling the truth about competition.

Coaches have heard it before. When I was coaching, I heard "they're better than their rating" from almost every family. A coach with 8 roster spots and hundreds of emails cannot take that on faith. They will take the player whose results already prove it.

"Better than the UTR" is a problem, not a selling point. If your kid really is better in practice than in matches, that tells a coach something important: the player is not yet converting ability into results. That gap is what coaches are trying to avoid.

Why the safety schools disappeared

Every recruiting plan starts with a projection. It must. When we build a list with a family at 14 or 15, we are estimating where the player will be at 17 or 18, and we know from day one that it is a moving target. We revisit it as results come in. Sometimes the player outpaces it. Sometimes they don't. When the level stalls, two things usually happen at once.

Development is not a straight line. Some players jump at 14 and plateau at 16. Some grow late. Injuries, burnout, school load, and coaching changes all play a role. A plateau does not mean your kid failed, and it does not mean the original plan was wrong. It means the target moved, and the plan has to move with it.

The market kept moving. While your kid held steady, the programs on that list kept recruiting stronger players, including international players with deep match records. A school that looked realistic at a certain UTR two years ago may be recruiting well above that today. The safety school was only ever safe relative to the level we expected, not the level we got.

Put those together and the old list no longer fits. That is not anyone's fault. It is exactly why a target list gets updated every season instead of being set in stone at the start.

The options are different, not gone

Here is the good news. There are still great places to play college tennis. They just may not be the places on the original list.

Division III. D3 is not a consolation prize. Some of the best academic schools in the country play D3 tennis, and many of those programs are very competitive. For a strong student, this is often the best fit available.

Division II and NAIA. Both offer athletic scholarships and real competition. Many families overlook them because of the label and miss great opportunities as a result.

Lower D1 programs. Not every D1 program is in a power conference. There are D1 teams where your kid could play in the lineup instead of sitting on the bench at a bigger name school.

Junior college. For some players, two years of junior college tennis is a chance to develop, build a record, and transfer up.

The question is no longer "which school did we want?" It is "where will my kid play, grow, and get a degree they are proud of?"

What to do now

1.     Let the list move with the player. The target list should be updated as the player develops or doesn't. Each season, check it against current UTR and results, and adjust up or down to match where the player is now.

2.     Stop explaining the rating to coaches. Every email that says "they're better than their UTR" costs you credibility. Let the results and the video speak.

3.     Play more matches, not just more practice. If your kid really is better than the rating, the only way to prove it is in tournaments.

4.     Lead with academics. Grades and test scores open doors that tennis alone will not. Many coaches can use academic aid to make a roster spot work.

5.     Ask your kid what they want. Somewhere along the way, the plan can become the parents' plan. Find out what matters to the player: playing time, location, school size, major, team culture.

6.     Move quickly. Rosters fill. The longer a family holds onto the old list, the fewer good options remain.

The bottom line

The goal was never a specific school. The goal was for your kid to play college tennis, get a great education, and have four years they will remember. That goal is still very much alive.

Letting go of the original plan is hard. I know. But the families who adjust early are the ones who end up with the best outcomes, and often with a fit that turns out better than the one they first imagined.

If you are not sure where your kid realistically fits right now, start with our free Module 1 of the College Tennis Blueprint. It walks you through how coaches actually evaluate players, so you can build a list that works.

The Rude Awakening Nobody Believes Until It Happens

Every year, I tell my players the same thing. College tennis is harder than you think. The academics are harder than you think. Both at the same time, every single day, is harder than you think.

And every September, I get the same messages back.

“Tina, this is so much harder than I expected.”

“I had no idea how fast everything moves here.”

“Nobody told me it would be like this.”

I did tell them. I tell all of them. It never quite lands until they are living it.

Why the warning never sticks

It is not that these kids are not listening. Most of them are sharp, driven, and they have heard “college is a big jump” from parents, coaches, and me, more times than they can count. But there is a difference between hearing a warning and feeling the thing it was warning you about.

In juniors, even at a high level, most players control their own schedule. Practice happens around school, not the other way around. In college, that flips overnight. Now there is early morning lifting, class, more class, practice, treatment, study hall, and a match schedule that does not care how tired you are or how the last paper went. Add a new time zone, a new coach’s expectations, a roommate, a dining hall, and a level of tennis where everyone across the net used to be the best player at their own club too, and it is a lot to process in week one.

What I actually hear from them

The specifics vary, but the pattern does not. It usually comes down to one or both of these:

The tennis is deeper than they expected. Not necessarily that any one opponent is unbeatable, but that there is no easy match on the schedule. Every single point matters against a lineup with no soft spots.

The academics do not pause for tennis. A professor does not care that there was a match the night before. The reading is still due. The problem set is still due. Nobody is going to remind a freshman twice.

Neither of these is a red flag. It is just the actual shape of college athletics, arriving all at once instead of gradually.

Why I am not worried when I hear it

Here is what I have learned after doing this for years, on both sides, as a player who lived it and as a coach who watched hundreds of freshmen go through it. The kids who message me in week two saying “this is so hard” are, almost without exception, the same kids who message me in November sounding completely different. Settled. Sharper. Talking about their team like it is already home.

The rude awakening is not a sign something went wrong in the recruiting process. It is the process working exactly as it should. You cannot fully prepare an eighteen year old for a jump like this with words alone. Some of it has to be lived.

How to shrink the gap before it hits

You cannot erase the adjustment entirely, and honestly, you should not want to. Some of it is good stress, the kind that builds a college athlete. But there is a real difference between an adjustment and a shock, and the tennis side is the one players have the most control over.

Come prepared. That means something specific:

Keep competing right up until you leave. It is tempting to ease off after signing, especially over the summer. Do not. Keep playing tournaments, keep taking matches, keep your competitive edge sharp. Most programs push players hardest in the fall season, which lands right when you arrive on campus. Walking in undertrained, even for a few weeks, means feeling that push twice as hard.

Train like the schedule is already real. College tennis stacks lifting, conditioning, practice, and matches back to back, with almost no recovery built in. Players who show up already used to that volume adjust in weeks. Players who show up used to a lighter juniors schedule adjust in months.

Get comfortable losing in practice. At this level, everyone across the net was the best player at their own club too. Players who have only ever been the best in the room struggle the most when that stops being true. Practicing against players who beat you regularly, before college, takes some of the sting out of that first real loss.

Ask your future coach what fall looks like. Most coaches will tell you exactly what preseason demands, if you ask before you arrive. Players who show up already knowing the shape of the schedule handle it better than players who find out in real time.

None of this removes the adjustment. It just means the version that hits in week one is smaller than it would have been.

What actually helps

I still say the warning out loud, every single year, because it plants something even if it does not fully register in the moment. But the more useful thing I do is set expectations honestly during recruiting, not just about tennis level and school fit, but about what week one and month one actually feel like. Families who hear this ahead of time tend to ride out the adjustment with a lot more patience than the ones who thought their kid would step onto campus and feel instantly at ease.

If your player is heading into their first year, or you are in the middle of the recruiting process right now, this is exactly the kind of thing worth talking through before the commitment, not after the first hard week.

Want help walking through what to expect, and how to prepare for it, before your player steps on campus? Reach out. Let's talk,

I Didn't Touch a Tennis Racket Until I Was 11. Then I Won an NCAA Championship.

What a viral story about Norway's youth sports system gets right, and what it means for your tennis family.

This week, everyone in sports is sharing a Wall Street Journal story about Norway's youth sports system and how it produced Erling Haaland, the most feared soccer player on the planet. The details sound almost made up to American ears. His childhood club in the small town of Bryne was free and open to everyone. The teams barely kept score. Nobody sorted kids by talent until age 13. Kids sampled multiple sports for years before choosing one. Haaland himself cross country skied, played handball, and set records in the long jump before committing to soccer.

Here is the number that should stop every sports parent cold: of the 40 boys in Haaland's childhood cohort at that club, 35 were still playing as adults. Six turned pro.

Thirty five out of forty. In America, we would call that a miracle. In Norway, they call it Tuesday.

My two systems

I read that article differently than most people, because I lived on the border between those two worlds.

I grew up in New York, inside the American youth sports machine. But I was raised by a Norwegian mother, and my grandfather back in Norway played soccer, was a ski jumper, and raced motorcycles. The war took his best athletic years, but the way he thought about sport shaped our family: you play everything, and you play because you love it.

My grandfather racing in Norway

So I did. With an older brother pulling me into every game in the neighborhood, I played every sport I could find. Soccer was my sport for years. I stayed competitive in it all the way through high school and seriously considered playing it in college.

Norway, where sport was just what you did

I did not touch a tennis racket until I was 11 years old. I played my first tournament at 12.

By the standards of today's junior tennis, I was hopelessly, unrecoverably behind. Parents of 9 year olds are told their window is closing. Families are pushed toward year round tennis, private academies, and single sport specialization before their kids finish elementary school.

That hopelessly behind kid won an NCAA championship at Georgia, played in two US Opens, and represented Norway in Fed Cup.

I am not the exception to how athletic development works. I am an example of it. So is Haaland.

My classroom for 11 years

What the research actually says

The most famous statistic in youth sports is that 70 percent of kids quit organized sports by age 13. You have probably seen it. Here is something most people do not know: researchers who recently went looking for the original source of that number never found one. It is a statistic that got repeated until nobody thought to question it.

I bring that up for two reasons. First, because if you have followed my work, you know my whole approach is giving families straight answers instead of recycled myths. And second, because the real, verifiable numbers are troubling enough on their own.

The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that as many as 35 percent of youth athletes experience overtraining, and nearly 1 in 10 experience burnout. The AAP points directly at the professionalization of youth sports, intense training loads, and early single sport specialization as the drivers of injury and dropout.

And if you are raising a daughter, pay close attention: research from the Women's Sports Foundation shows that by age 14, girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys. Girls face roughly 1.3 million fewer roster opportunities on high school and college teams, higher costs relative to opportunity, and environments with few female coaches. In girls' tennis, where the pressure to specialize early is intense and the costs are enormous, these forces stack on top of each other.

Norway, meanwhile, built a national framework called Children's Rights in Sport around participation, enjoyment, and delayed selection. By some estimates it keeps over 90 percent of Norwegian kids active in at least one sport. Their model is not soft. It is patient. There is a difference.

What this means for your tennis family

You cannot move to Norway. Your junior competes in the American system, with UTR, tournaments, rankings, and college coaches who evaluate on results. I spent 11 years as a D1 coach inside that system, and I help families navigate it every day. I am not going to pretend the pressure is imaginary.

But after a career on both sides of the recruiting desk, here is what I know: the American system asks "how good is your kid right now?" The better question, the one that actually predicts who is thriving at 18 and playing meaningful college tennis at 20, is "does your kid still love this?"

Burnout is a bigger threat to your player's college tennis future than any UTR number. I have watched more college careers end from the inside because the love ran out before the talent did. College coaches can develop a forehand. They cannot install desire.

So here is my practical advice, from someone who lived it:

If your player is under 13, protect the sampling years. A second sport is not a distraction from tennis. It builds athleticism, prevents overuse injuries, and keeps tennis feeling like a choice rather than a sentence. I was a soccer player who chose tennis. That choice fueled everything that came after.

Have the burnout conversation before there is a crisis. Ask your player, away from the car ride home after a loss, whether tennis is still theirs or whether it has quietly become yours. The answer might be uncomfortable. It is also the most important data point in your recruiting file.

Remember what coaches actually recruit. Every college coach I know would take the hungry, healthy, multi sport athlete with room to grow over the burned out prodigy who peaked at 14. I was that first kid. There is still time for yours to be too.

The first module of my College Tennis Blueprint course is about exactly this question: whether college tennis is right for your player at all, and how to have that conversation honestly. I made it free, because it is the conversation every family should have before spending a dollar on recruiting. You can watch it on our YouTube channel.

Norway did not build a World Cup monster by demanding one. They built a system where a kid could fall in love with sport and stay in love long enough for greatness to show up. That part, at least, any family can do.