The 100+ Things You're Supposed to Track by Junior Year (A Complete Recruiting Checklist)

One hundred moving pieces. One athlete.

That's roughly what the college recruiting process looks like by junior year. Coach names for 20+ schools. Every email sent and received. Every phone call and what was discussed. Camp dates, dead periods, visit logistics, questionnaire logins, film links, transcripts, references, GPA updates. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, your kid is also supposed to take the SAT next month.

If you're the parent of a sophomore about to enter junior year, this is not meant to scare you. It's meant to prepare you. Because the families who stay organized through this process aren't the ones who work harder. They're the ones who know exactly what needs tracking before the chaos starts.

Here's the full list.

Coach Contacts and Communication

This is where the volume hits hardest. If your athlete has 20 schools on their list, and each school has 2-3 relevant coaches (head coach, recruiting coordinator, position coach), that's 40-60 individual relationships to manage.

For each coach, you need to track:

Full name, title, and role
Email address and phone number
Every email sent and received
Every phone call: date, duration, and what was discussed
Text messages (yes, coaches text recruits)
Where you met them (camp, showcase, school visit)
What they asked for (film, transcripts, schedule)
What they promised ("check back in the fall," "we'll have you on campus," "stay in touch")
Their response patterns: who replies quickly, who goes quiet, who asked to be contacted again

Multiply that across 20 schools and you're looking at hundreds of individual data points. This is the category where things fall apart first, because a missed follow-up doesn't send you a reminder. The coach just moves on.

Recruiting Events and Logistics

Junior year is when the showcase and camp calendar explodes. Tracking the events themselves is straightforward. Tracking everything around them is where families get buried.

For each event, you should know:

Event name, date, and location
Registration deadlines and fees
Which coaches confirmed they'll attend
Which coaches you need to notify that you'll be there
Pre-event emails sent to coaches (with dates)
Post-event follow-up emails (the 24-48 hour window matters)
Performance notes from the event
Any conversations with coaches at the event and what was said

A single showcase can generate 5-10 follow-up tasks. Three showcases in a month means 15-30 action items on top of everything else.

NCAA Rules and Recruiting Periods

The NCAA recruiting calendar dictates when coaches can and cannot contact your athlete, and the rules change depending on the sport and division. Getting this wrong doesn't just cause confusion. It can mean missed windows.

What you need to track:

Dead periods: when coaches cannot have in-person contact with recruits
Quiet periods: when coaches can talk but only on campus
Contact periods: when coaches can meet recruits off-campus
Evaluation periods: when coaches can watch recruits compete but not talk to them
Your sport's specific calendar (they're all different)
Official visit windows and limits (five official visits total for D1)
Unofficial visit dates and logistics you've planned

This calendar shifts year to year. Bookmark the NCAA's recruiting calendars page for your sport and check it monthly.

Documents and Credentials

There's a stack of paperwork that grows throughout the process, and coaches will ask for different pieces at different times. Scrambling to find a transcript or test score when a coach asks for it is a bad look.

The full document checklist:

NCAA Eligibility Center (formerly Clearinghouse) registration
SAT/ACT scores (and send dates to the Eligibility Center)
High school transcript (current and updated each semester)
GPA: weighted and unweighted, updated each grading period
Course plan showing you'll meet NCAA core course requirements
Highlight video link (updated each season)
Skills video link (if applicable to your sport)
Athletic resume with stats, achievements, and measurables
Recruiting questionnaire logins for each school (these are all different sites with different passwords)
References: coach contact info, teacher recommendations
Medical/physical forms if requested for visits

Some of these update on a rolling basis. Your transcript changes every semester. Your GPA changes every grading period. Your highlight video should be refreshed each season. Tracking the documents is one thing. Tracking which version each school has is another.

School Research and Fit

Beyond the communication, you're also evaluating whether each school is actually a good fit. This is the category parents tend to track in their heads, which works until it doesn't.

For each school on the list:

Academic programs and majors of interest
Admission requirements and deadlines
Athletic program details: roster size, recruiting class, coaching staff tenure
Financial aid and scholarship information discussed
Campus visit notes (what you liked, what gave you pause)
Distance from home, travel logistics
Conference, division, and competitive level
Where this school ranks on your athlete's list (and whether that's changed)

Twenty schools with this level of detail is a research project. Some families keep it in a spreadsheet. Some keep it in their heads. By school number ten, both methods start breaking down.

The Follow-Up Calendar

This is the invisible category that ties everything together. Recruiting is a follow-up game. Coaches expect contact every 3-4 weeks. If you go quiet, they assume your athlete committed somewhere else or lost interest.

What needs scheduling:

Monthly follow-up emails to every active school (20+ emails/month)
Post-event follow-ups within 24-48 hours
Responses to coach emails within 24 hours
"Check back in the fall" reminders from spring conversations
Questionnaire completion deadlines
Camp registration deadlines
Official/unofficial visit scheduling windows
SAT/ACT registration and score send deadlines

Add it up and you're looking at 40-60 time-sensitive tasks per month during peak junior year. That's on top of school, practice, games, and everything else in your family's life.

The Real Number

When you total the coach contacts, the emails, the event logistics, the documents, the school research, and the follow-up calendar, you land somewhere north of 100 individual things to track. Not once, but continuously, because most of them update on a rolling basis.

The families who navigate this successfully aren't doing it from memory. They have a system, even if it started as a notebook or a spreadsheet, and they maintain it consistently.

If you're staring at this list and feeling the weight of it, that's the right reaction. The wrong reaction is to put off building your system until things get "busy." By junior year, you're already in it.

Scouted is a free app built specifically for this problem. It tracks schools, coaches, conversations, and follow-ups in one place so nothing slips through the cracks. But whether you use Scouted, a spreadsheet, or a three-ring binder, the important thing is to start tracking now. Junior year doesn't wait.