Verbal commitments are growing in popularity for the NCAA Division I and Division II colleges, and athletes need to understand what they mean. Verbal commitments are a nonbinding scholarship agreement between an athlete and a coach. Here is some helpful advice for accepting the scholarship to a college of your choice.

Contact is Crucial

College Golf: Accepting Scholarships. A critical component to lock in your scholarship placement is to continue communication with the college coaches showing interest in signing you. This means responding to phone calls, emails or letters from academic departments. Many potential athletes take the recruitment process for granted, expecting to always receive a 100% scholarship. This thinking by athletes means many times athletes turn down scholarships offered because they are expecting nothing less than 100%. You should keep in contact with the coaches, if you don’t you could be limiting your options and missing out on great opportunities.

Ask Questions

When meeting a coach or recruiter, this is your time to put forward concerns, myths, confirm information, ask questions and learn more about the procedure. Come up with as many questions as you can and gather as much information as you can. When talking to coaches you need to feel great, because in the end, you are going to have this coach for four years. You should be able to envision playing for and training with the coach for that duration of time.

Notifying Schools

While you are not obligated to call individual schools to let them know that you have verbally agreed to a specific one, it is a promising idea. For both accepting and rejecting colleges, ensure that you are always polite and courteous.

Just remember, nothing is set in stone until you have received and signed the National Letter of Intent. Once signed, other coaches are no longer able to contact you under the NCAA guidelines. This contract also binds them to giving you the scholarship in writing other than as a verbal agreement.