Rugger14 and Panthadad2 are correct. I’ve been reading these posts for a few years now, and it does irritate me when people put stock into recruiting rankings. By doing so, you are just buying into the marketing strategy of those companies who are selling a product, which are their events. There are several reasons that those rankings don’t mean anything:
1. Not everyone plays regularly in those events. Even if they do go play in some of them, they probably aren’t playing with the big name teams or coaches that are known to PGF or FloSoftball. It’s much about who you know. Case-in-point, all of our current freshmen who were recruited by Allister are listed as PGF high school All-Americans. Why? Because Allister told Derek and Joann Allister to put them on the list. Some of the girls didn’t even play high school softball, nor have they played in a PGF event.
2. At 16 years old, when girls are being recruited, it is impossible to rank among them without some type of 1000-player tryout, and to rank the top 100, you would be splitting hairs. Also, if you were to really have all of the best players in the country try out, and you were able to rank the top 100, many, if not most of the players on the current “top 100” list wouldn’t be there anymore, and ours certainly might. Besides that, most of the top 100 probably won’t even pan out as top players once they finally get to college.
3. At 16 and 17 years old, coaches are merely recruiting “potential”, not stats. Most don’t know your stats and don’t care about your stats, so a stats-based top recruit list is also meaningless. They recruit coachable ATHLETES, and hopefully, the coaching turns them into great softball players. (Side note: College coaches I've talked to say they won't even open an email from a recruiting service).
There are 286 Division 1 softball teams in the country competing to recruit the “best” players, whatever that means, and the best players will usually land at the power five conference schools. Minnesota has 1 Power Five school. Iowa has 2. Nebraska has 1. Wisconsin has 1, and Illinois has 2. We will not get top players from the south. Not because of the program, or because of the coach, but because it is Minnesota! Fortunately, we have the benefit of not having to compete too hard to get some of the very best thirty athletes in the Midwest, and yes, some would have made the “top 100” if they lived somewhere else.
Since I don’t look at the top 100 recruiting class, I don’t know if any of our current freshmen are on it, but I doubt it. I watched them play in the fall, and I tell you what, they are bringing a level of athleticism and versatility to the infield that I haven’t seen in the last four years I’ve been watching.
There is too much gloom and doom from some people on this forum. (Mr./Ms. Gameday, I’m coming for you next).
