Recruiting dead period: What the latest extension means for Division I soccer

A coach watches on at the 2019 Northeast Soccer Jamboree at Loomis Chaffee. (Mike Gridley/New England Soccer Journal)

Division I soccer recruiting will remain severely limited through at least Jan. 1, 2021 – if not even later.

The NCAA Division I Council lengthened the in-person recruiting dead period Wednesday through the new year, amounting to a three-and-a-half month extension during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial dead period was implemented March 13 and has been routinely revisited, relegating coaches to virtual communication while being precluded from all in-person recruiting.

Connecting with four D-I coaches across New England on Thursday, they expressed wide-ranging concerns about how this will impact recruiting well into the future. Each one returned to why, conversely, Division II and Division III programs don’t face a dead period. The D-II quiet period ended Aug. 31 and there’s no blanket D-III restriction, though the NESCAC (as an example) has an indefinite in-person dead period of its own.