Should you post your offers?

Short answer: "No"

I was talking to a college coach this week and we started talking about social media among other things. He asked me what I thought about athletes posting about the offers they were receiving from schools. I immediately asked if it was an athlete I knew! :) Then I gave my answer and. it's the same answer I give to parents when they ask me: "They shouldn't be doing that."

I understand that this happens in other sports like football and basketball. The increased use of social media has made this even more profound in those sports. There are even ideas out there that you can get recruited to play a sport just off of social media. I get asked that question from parents as well (I thought I had written about social media and recruiting, but I haven't so I will get on that here soon). The reason that you don't see this very often in volleyball is mostly because I don't think college coaches are really on board with this kind of thing. Posting about that you had a "great visit" at a school or posting that you are verbally committed to s school is a fantastic idea and I see nothing wrong with that. Once an athlete starts posting about their "offers" it changes the tune a little bit.

Volleyball programs are built around the concept of "team". Community in these programs is important. Working hard for each other is important. Culture in the program is important. Everyone on the team has to be on the same page and working towards the same goal in order for greatness to be achieved. So, the problem with posting about your "offer" is that it communicates the opposite of all of these things. It signals to coaches, potentially, some questions:

Is this athlete selfish?

Is she really interested?

Is she doing this just to get likes?

Is she trying to get more offers?

Do I really want this athlete in my program?

Now, to be totally fair, not every coach thinks this way. Plenty of fantastic athletes think very highly of themselves and these things are never an issue. The problem remains when you might potentially have too much ego in your locker room and not enough work ethic. Each coach is different in terms of how much they want to handle on their roster. Even having an athlete that is "drama" isn't the worst thing in the world. It comes down to what that coaching staff wants to deal with. It's a risk vs reward situation sometimes.

Similar to every other social media post for athletes, they need to be thinking about WHAT they are posting and what that communicates about them prior to posting it.