Being in high school, many students are expected to know what they want to do with their life, making major decisions about colleges, careers and living situations. For many, this can be stressful and hard to do. However, for OHS junior Ashley Forbes, she has been waiting for this announcement for a long time.
“I was playing club soccer, basically all my life. And then I knew I wanted to play college soccer, and some of my coaches helped me kind of start the recruiting process,” Forbes said.
After coaches saw Forbes play enough, they invited her to come visit SIUE. She accepted and after deciding she liked the environment, she verbally committed.
“A verbal commitment is whenever it happens before your senior year, before everything’s official. And then signing is December of your senior year, and you actually get the official papers to say that you are committing to that school legally,” Forbes said.
Playing a sport includes having to attend many practices, games and big time commitments. This can affect time with your family and your friends, and to keep good relationships, it often requires them to be supportive of what you are spending your time doing.
“My grandparents have always been so supportive and always been there for me. They show up to games, and then my other ones always ask how I do and stuff. So that’s always been good to have that support system,” Forbes said.
Having people to support you while making decisions can be important. In this case, it may even help to know that you’re making the right choice with your future.
“Advice I would give would just be to kind of narrow down where you want to go and what you have in mind for what you want in a program, your coaches and in the atmosphere,” Forbes said.
It can be important that student athletes take the process one step at a time when getting recruited. According to Forbes, July 15 going into your junior year is when coaches can reach out to you and when you need to decide if playing in college is something that works for you.
“Sometimes during the recruitment process, you can get unmotivated because coaches may not be reaching out to you …” Forbes said, “But ultimately you just have to trust the process and know that you’re going to end up where you’re meant to be, and that kind of happened with me.”
