Softball · Issue No. 19
Why One Coach Waits to Recruit a Talented 8th Grader
Week of September 14, 2026
QUICK TAKE - Reaching out too early rarely leads anywhere — families aren't ready to hear it yet. - He waits until junior or senior year, once reality has set in about realistic offers. - Talent identified early still gets noticed — just quietly, on a watch list, not in an active pitch.
Kevin Griffin, head coach of the NCAA Division III national runner-up Belhaven Blazers, has a recruiting habit that surprises a lot of families the first time they hear about it: he deliberately doesn't recruit talented eighth and ninth graders, even when he can already tell a player has real potential.
The reasoning is patient and specific. Players in those early years of high school are, in his words, still convinced they're Division I-bound — and understandably so, since that's the dream most young players start with. Reaching out to them at that stage rarely leads anywhere productive, because the family isn't yet in a place to seriously evaluate a program like his. So instead, he lets that period play out and circles back once reality has had time to set in, typically by junior or senior year, when a family has a clearer, more realistic sense of which programs are genuinely recruiting their daughter and at what level.
This timing isn't just about avoiding wasted effort on his end. It's also, in his experience, when families are most receptive to a serious, honest conversation about fit — a conversation that's much harder to have productively when a family is still holding out for offers that were never realistically going to arrive. By waiting, he finds families that are ready to seriously engage rather than families still working through disappointment about a different outcome they were hoping for.
None of this means talent identified early doesn't matter, or that a coach shouldn't quietly keep a player on a watch list. It means the actual recruiting conversation tends to go better later than families expect, and pushing for it earlier doesn't necessarily speed anything up — it can just mean having the same conversation multiple times before a family is genuinely ready to hear it.
From an interview with Coach Kevin Griffin, Belhaven University.
This piece ran in PPA Pro Issue No. 19, alongside a camp spotlight and trainer pick for every sport. Subscribe free.