Latest / Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball / Episode 133: To Reclassify or Not To Reclassify

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Episode 133: To Reclassify or Not To Reclassify · Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball

• 0:00
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• 1:12
  Speaker B: Welcome to.
• 1:13
  Speaker C: This week's edition of the Dugout Dish podcast. I am Andy Kittis, joined by my wonderful and handsome co host Keith Glasser. How we doing?
• 1:21
  Speaker B: Great. How are you?
• 1:22
  Speaker C: Good today. To reclass or not to reclass and also discussion on gap years. That is the question slash topic of the day. This is an interesting one. I don't, I'm not anti reclass by any stretch of the imagination. I think that there are plenty of valid scenarios as to why and when and the value of it and I think we'll try to unpack as much of that as we can. So I don't think this is the goal of this isn't to come up with some definitive answer on reclassing because I think like many of the topics that are that that we discuss or in general have college baseball recruiting undertones. There's a, there's different answers for different people and different folks and different families and different types of players. But this is an interesting one to discuss because it has become more popular. Reclassing has become more popular. Why people do it I think is where I want to go on this and like try to better understand some of the scenarios and discuss some of the different scenarios and the timing of it all. But it's certainly something that, you know, it's existed for a while with post graduation schools and, and doing PG years. But I think what's become more prevalent is players doing it like either mid high school or sometimes even kind of resetting in eighth grade and doing eighth grade a second time. So I want to unpack that and I've got some insight from some college coaches that I've talked to about this specific topic and how it impacts how they view kids and all that kind of stuff. But let's, let's see where this one takes us here. Coach, you got any. Any opening thoughts on the. The reclass conversation?
• 3:28
  Speaker B: Not particularly. I'm gonna find my way through this one.
• 3:33
  Speaker C: I don't.
• 3:35
  Speaker B: I think that there's certain. There's always going to be certain reasons as to why you should reclass. And I think if there's some certain boxes that you check in doing so, then it's not the worst idea in the world. I think reclassing just to reclass because you think that it's going to give you a better opportunity to be recruited the following year is not the best strategy. Is it going to work for some people? Sure it is like anything else in this world. But I don't know that just staying back a year or taking a gap year or going PG somewhere is always going to. Is the answer for everyone. Just because it doesn't. Just because you're, you know, if you've been passed over, you didn't get what you want this round, like, what. There's a lot that needs to happen for it to happen the following year. Because the same thing can happen. Right. Like, you're going to be viewed as like, well, he's. He should be a freshman in college and he's still short of some of the other, you know, of the freshmen I have on my team type conversation. So you're going to have to make leaps and bounds if that's kind of what your thought process is. But, you know, if you check the boxes of some things that, you know, I'm sure we'll get into them. But, you know, age can always be a one. You know, if you're the youngest kid in your class by far, and you should technically be, you know, you could be the year younger. Like, that's not the worst idea in the world. Right. Like give your body another year to mature. Sure. You know, grades obviously could be one, you know, but some of those things that check the box, that makes sense. But just to do it, to do it because you think you're going to have a better opportunity. The filing year. There's a whole other class of kids coming too. So, you know, I will get into that, but would say that's my opening, my opening statement on my feeling on. On gap years. Post grad, reclass the like, yeah, I.
• 5:37
  Speaker C: Think I'm gonna, I'm gonna take us down the road of A conversation that I had with a good friend of ours, because I think it dovetails off of what you were talking about. That, like, just reclassing to reclass, like, it doesn't guarantee you anything. And I'm paraphrasing. I'll provide a little bit of a backstory here so that we have a little bit of context as to the response here. And for complete transparency, I've gotten this similar response from several coaches at the highest level of college baseball who. They don't need to be named. So young man was very young for his grade. He was September, October, birthday, you know, so you're talking about somebody who's not even going to turn 18 before they step on a college campus. So that checks one of the boxes that you had mentioned, Coach Glass. That age is certainly something to take into consideration if. If reclasses the route you're going to go. Talented kid. School liked him, didn't love him. And I asked him, it's a guy that we know really well, and I asked him straight up, like, hey, like, what if he decided that he was going to reclass? Does that change anything for you? And he said, not until he gets better. And I think that that kind of summarizes what you were saying that, you know, you can reclass, but you just are going. You're going into a different group of individuals that you have to compete against. It isn't as simple as, well, I'm 84 to 87 right now. As a 2026, I'm going to reclass to a 2027. It doesn't necessarily make you more recruitable just because you reclass. You still need to get yourself better, because if you stay 84 to 87 or even just see a slight uptick, you know, maybe you go to 86 to 88, you know, your floor comes up at that peak velocity. Doesn't. Doesn't change. You're probably in the exact same boat as you were the previous year. So I think that that's about as straightforward of an answer as I can give in terms of if you make that decision. You have to understand that it doesn't vault you into a different category. It doesn't vault you into a different level unless you see the growth and development that's going to be required to pitch at a specific. I think that's the thing that often gets overlooked in these conversations about reclassing is that we make this broad assumption that, well, like, if I get six more months, you know, I'm. I'm gonna be, you Know those, those ACC schools who didn't like me, like, if I just get a little bit better, like they're gonna like me all of a sudden. And you just go back into another group of kids that are equally as talented as the ones that you're competing with. And you need to prove yourself in that moment just as much as you had to prove it in the previous moment. And making assumptions on development, making assumptions on where you're headed and where you're going and how that reclass is going to impact you. You need to get down to kind of the nitty gritty of it. And the reality of it is that you're really just buying into more competition. You're just kind of kicking the competition down the road a little bit to where you, you're still going to need to be really good. And it may not, it may not change your, your trajectory at all. You might be a mid level division one arm now. You might be a mid level division one arm eight months from now.
• 9:18
  Speaker B: Right? Like, it doesn't, it's a, it. I guess my point in my opening salvo was that if you're just doing it because you think you're going to get a better opportunity because you're, you're older, I like, you have to actually get exponentially better for it to really get what you think you, I guess, deserve out of the recruiting process. Like, you know, at the end of the day the, the market's going to set where you are going to go, right? So, you know, if you think that you're, you should be pitching in the ACC and not one ACC coach has called you, you might need to realize you're not an ACC arm and just taking a year and going to, you know, whether it's a gap year or post grad or whatever it might be like, that likely is not the answer. The answer is probably having honest conversations with yourself and those around you of where you actually fit in and where you should be tempering your expectations so that you can find a spot where you can play college baseball. And you know, I don't know this to be true. Like, I didn't do a lot of postgrad recruiting at rpi. It's not to say that it doesn't happen. It's not to say that those kids don't play baseball in college, but I don't, I, my point is I, I don't know the world all that well because I, I, I didn't really, I didn't recruit it and it just was, I don't Think we were really the fit for a lot of those kids coming out of those types of schools, you know, but it, you know, I, I just, I have a hard time kind of justifying like this is what we're gonna do just because it, it makes sense. Right. And it's, it's relevant in my world, albeit not for a long time. But, you know, my son's four. He's got a super late birthday, right. Like he's going to be the youngest kid in his class. So what do I, what do we do? Do we as college coaches that for his parents, like, do we hold him back a year we, or do we let them go? My and my wife's assumption is that we're just going to roll with it and see what happens. I think that you're better served in that sense of being the youngest one in your grade because then there's, you know, there's more to be said there. Being the oldest in your grade and still not being better than a good portion of the student athletes that are being recruited doesn't bode well for you in the recruiting process. And again, it's not to say it doesn't work for everybody. It certainly has worked for people in the past. But I think you have to think long and hard about what are the ultimate goals if reclassing, postgrading or gap taking a gap year is what your ultimate plan is going to be, right? Like, you have to have a legit plan as to how that is going to look and what you are going to do in order to get yourself to the spot where you ultimately want to be and understand that it's a huge risk. Right? Like it is a, like anything else in the recruiting process, it is a risk. You are going to have to figure out whether or not it's for you. You're going to have to go out and execute and do the things it is that you need to do in order to get better so that you can be recruited. And then, you know, you're gonna have to let the process dictate and the market dictate where you fit, right? Because after that, you know your real only option is to go play junior college baseball, which again is not, not looking down our nose at it. But like you can't continually post grad for numerous years just to try to get where you think you want to go. You're gonna have to, ultimately, you have to understand that if you, you're going to gap your PG reclass like that's it. This is what the market Is telling me this is where I'm fitting in. These are the places it is that I'm going to have to choose from to be able to play college baseball. You don't get to continually do this year after year after year. It's not a transfer portal scenario, if you will, of just trying to delay college to you ultimately get to the program it is that you want to be at. Does that make sense?
• 13:57
  Speaker C: No, it makes perfect sense. It did. If you're gonna reclass under those circumstances where it's like, you know what? I'm not getting what I want. I'm gonna reclass to try to give myself another shot at it. If that's like the core reason that you do it, you have to understand that the only way things are going to change is if you get noticeably better. And even under those circumstances, you still might not get the result that you want. And you have to be able to sleep at night knowing that that's a decision you made. And you have to take some ownership over what happens as you lead into kind of your next recruiting cycle and then whatever happens on the back side of that. And I think that that's what a lot of people don't spend enough time to think about. When you're a 20, 26 and it's September 15th, you think you're a Division 1 player. You're not getting any Division 1 interest. If you decide to reclass to a 27 and you just think that going through the motions in the off season and all of a sudden, like, well, I'm a year older, like, I'll get recruited by Division 1 schools. I think you're going to be sorely mistaken and you're probably going to be very disappointed with the results you're going to get on the back end of it. You almost got to look at it as like a. Like a semi wake up call that, like, wow, I got to get better. Like, nobody is calling me. So if I want to play college baseball, I need to get better. The quicker that players realize that in general, the better. Right? The quicker you realize, like, I have to work really hard at this and I need to put myself in a position where I'm recruitable at the level that I think that I belong at. But in those moments, just understand that that's a big piece of the puzzle and that it doesn't guarantee you anything. There are no guarantees in any of this. So food for thought. There couple circumstances that I think are very valid for a reclass and I.1 is out of your Control to a certain extent, I think injury in the timing of injury can be really impactful in what your decision making process is going to be. You know, if you want to play college baseball and you're 20, 26 and you got banged up at the end of your high school season and you missed the whole summer because of injury and you just didn't have an opportunity to go out. You know, maybe you hurt your knee or you hurt your arm or something. I think that's a super valid reason to potentially look into reclassing, to give yourself another summer to go out and get recruited, get healthy, get yourself ready for that. To me, that's probably one of the more valid cases of, hey, you, you missed a good chunk of development time because something happened to you that was out of your control. I've had those conversations with parents. You get good results out of it. But once again, it takes a deeper conversation about, you know, do you really want to play college baseball? Are you ready to undertake this? Are you comfortable with doing another year of high school? What does that look like? You know, for some guys it's as simple as, well, I'll just go do a post grad year. Okay, that's great, that's awesome. There's some amazing boarding schools and postgraduate programs where guys have the ability to go and give themselves that extra year. If that lines up with your family, their needs, what you're looking for, I think an injury is probably one of the top reasons to reclass if playing college baseball is really important to you. For some families, the option to go and pay for a prep school may not be there. So you need to dig deep into the rules within your particular state, within your particular district of what is reclassing look like? Because sometimes, you know, I only know this because we had a guy who did it, is you might have to go and take classes at a junior college in order to stay eligible. So you need to dig into what the rules are in your state, in your specific area around how can you do an extra year of school while staying eligible in the public school district that you're in? Because it's not the same across the board. And I wish I knew more about this so we could expand upon it, but it's, it's such a district and state, district and district by district and state by state conversation that you would need to dig into those rules. You probably need to go to your administration and you want to make sure you fully understand what that's going to entail. So digging deep into that is Another piece of this process that needs to be considered the other one. And you hit a little bit on it with, with your son, like if you're really young, Right. And I think this is something that parents should try to make a decision, decision on this a little bit earlier rather than later. But if you're that late August, September, October, birthday, you know, that timeline that we were talking about, and I fell into this category as a player too, where, I mean, I turned 18 two weeks before I got on campus. Do you hold a kid back a year in eighth grade? Right. There's a significant amount of data that suggests that if you do, your academic and your athletic outcomes tend to be a little bit better because you're of age. Right. You're not, you're not six, eight months behind from a development perspective, potentially. So that's another one where I think that's a super valid one. Right? If you're that really young kid who's going to graduate high school at 17 and you're able to make that decision earlier rather than later, I think it's, I think it's something worth considering. I think it's can be really beneficial for a lot of guys to, to get that extra year development.
• 19:46
  Speaker B: Sure. Sorry for the pause. I was scrambling for the button there. Yeah, I think the injury thing is, you know, it, it's kind of the most obvious. Right. You know, if you missed the entire recruiting process, then, yeah, it's, it's not a bad idea to reclass and see where what shakes out and give yourself a whole other summer and you come back healthy. Like, that's completely understandable as to why you reclassed. I think there is a little bit of a stigma with coaches as well as to why, like, the question is always going to be, why did he reclass? Right. And those types of reasons are always going to be ones that are like, okay, yeah, no, that makes sense. I think there can be a little bit of a detrimental thought process with some coaches. If it's just like, well, he didn't get what he wanted last year, like, okay, so what changed? Right? And like, if everything's changed and you've gotten exponentially better and you're recruitable, I don't think it's a problem. But you know, like the age and, you know, if you're going to be super young, I mean, shoot. We played with a guy who didn't turn 18 until school had already started his freshman year, and he was a pretty good baseball player in his own right. Um, you know, so I think that sometimes it's, you know, the age thing makes sense, but I think it's also, you know, what each and every individual family wants to do. I would probably argue that it's been a little bit more prominent in recent years, at least in the last, like 10, 15 years, than it was when we were growing up where it's just like, hey, this is, this is your grad year. Like you just play. There was no, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of it, or maybe it was just where I grew up, you know, But I, I think that there are, there's certainly going to be valid reasons as to why you would reclass and what that looks like. I just think that you need to have a long look in the mirror and a detailed conversation with your family and people that you trust that are going to be around you that can help you through that process of what this looks like and how you can ultimately get to where it is that you want to go. If you're just going to blindly reclass because you think that it's going to automatically give you a leg up on the following, you know, recruiting class, I think that can be, that is very short sighted and will be a fallacy more times than not. But again, there are multiple, you know, the injury one is a great one. Especially like if you missed the entire summer, like, yeah, man, get yourself healthy. And if you want to reclass and, you know, however you got to do it, then, yeah, let's do it, you know, but again, if it's just because you didn't get the outcome you wanted and you're going to try it again, you know, you just have to understand there's a lot of, there's a lot of really good players in the 27 class and you're going to have to be markedly better than a good portion of them in order to find yourself recruitable in that, in that space.
• 23:00
  Speaker C: The, the other piece of this conversation is the gap year, which would be like reclassing but not going to school. Admittedly, this is a rare, a more rare situation where guys decide to take a year off before they go to school. I think it's a little bit different than your normal high school student who might take a gap year so they can go travel Europe or something like that, but a situation where you're essentially reclassing, but you're not enrolling in another school, you're not playing for another high school, you're basically taking a year to try to develop from a baseball perspective. And I think the, the thing that I would advise folks who are considering this to be mindful of is what are you filling that time with in addition to the baseball stuff? Because inevitably it's going to come up with admissions. You know, what are they doing? Do you have an internship lined up? Are you taking some junior college courses? I think just having a pure baseball plan here could make it hard. Especially if you're somebody who's pursuing, like, the higher academic realm. You got to make sure that your resume doesn't have a big gap in it in terms of what you're accomplishing that aligns with something from the academic perspective. First thing that comes to mind with me is like, do you have an internship? You know, are you going to go work at a local business and, you know, learn how to do certain things? Are you, you know, gonna shadow an entrepreneur? Are you gonna, you know, take some junior college courses to, to chip away at your, at your credits mind that if you do that, you have to do less than 12 or else you lose it. That chips away your eligibility potentially. But that, that's the first thing that comes to mind me with the gap years is, yeah, the baseball stuff seems obvious. And I think the same questions need to be asked that we just talked about. If you're going to reclass from a 26 to a 27 with the idea that, like, well, all of a sudden I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to go from a fringe Division 1 player to pitching in the SEC just because I give myself another year. I think all of what we said there is still very much relevant for this. But my mind goes to. And you've been in admissions department, so you may have come across this, but my mind goes to what is the rest of that look like in making sure it's not a blank slate of you just lifting and playing baseball and making sure there's something on your resume that admissions offices are going to find valuable. Yeah.
• 26:00
  Speaker B: They're going to ask if you, if you're going to ask for a gap year, they're going to ask what you're doing and they have every right to grant it or say, yeah, no, we're not. You'd have to reapply for first year student admission if they don't necessarily feel as though it is, you know, valid enough for them to grant it to you. So essentially how it works would be like, you would apply to schools, you get accepted, and then you can ask for a gap year. They're going to ask what your plans are and Then it's, you know, it's ultimately up to the schools to whether or not they'd say, yeah, we'll hold your spot in next year's class, given what you're doing, or, you know, no, we're not going to hold your spot. You're going to have to, you know, reapply as a first year student. But generally speaking, if you have some semblance of a plan from an academic or work standpoint, then yeah, your, your gap year will, will is likely to.
• 26:57
  Speaker C: Be.
• 26:59
  Speaker B: Upheld so that your, your spot would be held the following year in that class. You know. Now I, I don't necessarily think that most admissions departments would be thrilled to hear, like, I'm just going to go play baseball and be a quasi professional athlete for a year. In order to get what I want, it would have to be more along the lines of, like, excuse me, I have an internship lined up and I'm going to be working here and I'm going to be doing XYZ in order to, you know, better my experience before I get to college. And, you know, in those cases, you're, you're likely to be granted. So I would, you know, if the gap year is something it is that you're looking to do, then I would make sure that, you know, obviously the baseball component could be part of it or whatever sport it is you want to play, but you're going to want to make sure that there's some academic or professional experience that's going to be going on in that gap year so that your, you know, the admissions department will say yes. Now, the other question I would ask, quite frankly, Andrew, if we were doing a gap year, is if you're doing a gap year, that by definition means that you've been, you've applied and you've been accepted to these schools. The question then would be like, why are you not going to one of those schools? You know, but if you, if you're not going to apply to any of these schools and you're going to do a gap year, I, I would suggest making sure that there's some semblance of professional experience that's going on so that when you do apply and they ask like, what did you do after you graduated from high school? It's, well, I got an internship at this place and, or I was working here or working, whatever it might be, and, you know, avoid the, well, I was just trying to play baseball and make my dream over the course of, you know, the entire year, because that might, you know, that might be Frowned upon in some admissions departments around the country.
• 29:09
  Speaker C: Yeah. And I think that gets no, and you nailed it. Like, you got to have a plan if that's what you're going to do. Which is why I think that if you're gonna, if you're gonna reclass looking into your options for academics going to another school, I mean, there's academies that have popped up that are almost strictly baseball and athletics driven. I know that comes with a price and some people may not have the ability to, to push that money forward, which is totally understandable. But I would, I would at least kick the tires on those where you can kind of get the best of both worlds, where you're still able to, to, you know, add to your academic resume, but also maybe have a, a stronger focus on the athletic portion of it versus, you know, going to, you know, like a true prep school where, you know, it's the full encompassing of coursework and extracurriculars and baseball and other sports and all that kind of stuff. But there, there is some kind of like, kind of tweener options out there, I guess is the best way to put them. So looking into those to see if that's something that's viable. But if you're just going to take a year to just lift, I think, you know, you might, you might end up with something, right. If you're really, really good. I'm not sure if, you know, some of those schools are going to care, but if you're taking a full gap year, I'm guessing that closing the gap on schools that aren't going to care is probably a little bit of a long shot. You know, you're probably trying to get yourself to the level that you're recruitable to play in college, period. More so than making the jump from really good player to elite level player. I think most of those guys are probably going to have a home or at least some, some interest going into this process. So a lot to think about when it comes to the reclass thing. I think, I think there's a lot of good reasons to do it. I think that families need to have some long winded, detailed conversations around what it looks like, why you're doing it, and making sure that you have a plan in place so that you can be as effective as possible during that window. Because if you just think, well, reclass is going to make this easy on me, I think that that's a false pretense that we'll get that can get a lot of people in trouble in this process. And you Know, you fast forward 10 months and you're in the exact same spot that you were before because you didn't do what you needed to do. And that's my biggest fear when people talk about, when they bring up the reclass conversation is do you understand what needs to be done for things to change? Because if you don't, they're likely not going to change. And you're basically just delaying playing college baseball by a year to get the same result. And I don't think that anybody goes into the reclassing conversation understanding that that's very much a reality.
• 32:22
  Speaker B: I would argue it's probably more the reality than not. Right. Like, you know, I, I think that you're. You have to understand the, the, the jump you're gonna have to make in order to get to the spot it is that you want to get to. Not say it can't be done, but I think that it's. You need to, you need to know what that looks like, and you need to be at a place and, and with people and, and have the drive to be able to do that for yourself, to get to where you want to go. It's like, it. Reclassing just doesn't automatically. I think it's. It's a catch all like, well, we can just reclass and see what happens, because it'll be bigger, older, stronger, faster. Like, that's not the case. You're gonna have to know what it is, where your deficiencies are. You're gonna have to make your deficiencies better. You're gonna have to make your strength stronger, and you have to be surrounded by people that can do that and to help you do that. And you have to be able to have the drive to be able to do that as well. Otherwise, you're just going to likely end up in the same spot or not out of the spot at all. It's like, well, you know, if he wasn't good enough for us last year, he's a year older, went to a prep school and didn't get any better. Like, why are we, why are we taking a. What essentially amounts to a college sophomore as a freshman who's not better than anyone else that we have. And then, like, that's, That's a real thought process that goes on in the recruiting process. So, like, just understand that side of it too. You're going like. And I think that this is, this gets lost in the conversation sometimes. Like, it doesn't get lost when it works for people. Right? But if it doesn't ultimately work and you haven't gotten markedly better. And coaches are evaluating it. They're going to evaluate you. Whether you like it or not. You will be evaluated against your true graduation class as well. Like, you're not just going to be evaluated across 27s, because, like, coaches, some coaches are going to look at and be like, well, he's not better than any of the freshmen we have that are going to be sophomores. Like, I would rather take a kid that I is a year younger and just as good where I can develop that kid more. Like, that's a legit thought process. So understand that, like, they're, they're. That can happen as well.
• 34:50
  Speaker C: But the other piece, too is that if you've gone through it and we'll just use 26 as an example, because we're kind of in that window where some people might start making that reclass decision is if you've gone through a whole recruiting cycle and schools have seen you right, and they know who you are and they're not recruiting you, but they've seen you right. And then they see you next spring or next summer, and you're the same guy. Not only have you not moved the needle from a talent perspective, but you're probably, Honestly, you're probably raising some questions of like, well, how come this kid didn't get any better?
• 35:26
  Speaker B: Right. What have you been doing?
• 35:27
  Speaker C: Yeah. So, you know, that's another thing. And like, maybe that's the motivation somebody needs to hear. But some of the stuff that we're saying right now applies to kids who aren't going to reclass. Like, you're 27 right now, and you're not getting any calls from anybody, which is totally normal. It's totally normal.
• 35:43
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 35:45
  Speaker C: But if you don't go and bust your ass this off season and get after it and get better, your situation may not change next year. And that's the hard truth about all of this, is that you're, you know, what's the old adage like? You're either getting better, you're getting worse, you're never staying the same. And if you stay the same throughout the off season, you really ended up getting worse because you're getting passed by people.
• 36:14
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 36:15
  Speaker C: And there's guys out there who are working. There's guys out there who are growing a couple inches. There's guys out there who are in the weight room putting on £20. And you have to. It's not just a battle with yourself individually, but you're battling against. You're battling against the rest of your recruiting class. For spots, and you have to outwork them so that 27 like this, everything that we're saying about the expectation of what your next recruiting cycle is going to look like for the reclass, like this applies for 27s 100%. And there's two ways you can look at it. I'm not getting any calls. I got to get better or I'm not getting any calls. And I'm going to blame and say that everybody else is. You know, these guys are just wrong. They don't know I should be getting calls like, I'm good enough to play there. Well, you need to go and prove it, because coaches call good players and, you know, that's something that's some food for thought for people. And that's, you know, we're gonna have a conversation about this in a, in a podcast coming up, but it kind of gets to, how bad do you want this? And like, how, how much does it matter to you that you, you get an opportunity to play college baseball? And if there's any qualifiers that come before or after the idea of playing college baseball, then you need to, you need to reevaluate how you view this. Because the guys who are willing to do the extra work, who are willing to sacrifice some things outside of baseball in order to get an opportunity to play in a ultimately, what is a very small fraternity of guys that get to play college baseball, if you're not willing to make some of those sacrifices, it's probably not going to. It's probably not going to be all that fun when you get there anyways. And for the guys who are trying to reclass or they're thinking about reclassing, you have to understand that if you're going to do it, you have to be all in on figuring out how good you can be at this and not just make any broad assumptions that if I reclass, everything's going to work out for me. Because it's. I think you'll probably end up being disappointed on the back end of it with what you end up with.
• 38:27
  Speaker B: Right. I just think, again, as we do on this podcast, it's a lot more nuanced than just thinking this is the easiest thing to do. Didn't get what we wanted. We're going to reclass. It'll all work itself out next year. Like, it's not that easy. There's a lot more that you need to actually go do and have. Like, you need to have a road map. Right. Like. And I think this is a broader conversation for a different podcast. But the college baseball isn't for everyone either. Like, it might not be for you. And maybe you figure that out in the. In the postgraduate process of, like, maybe this isn't really what I ultimately want to do. Like, it ain't easy, as most things in life that are worth it are not. Right? Like, it's not easy. And it's why there's. It's why only 8, you know, 8% go do it. And I don't know, you know, the vast majority of people, I would argue, probably make it three or four years. Like, obviously there's washout in there, but it's not easy to play college athletics. Doesn't matter if it's baseball or lacrosse or football or wrestling or hoops or volleyball, whatever it might be, right? Like, it ain't easy. There's a lot of sacrifice that you have to make. There's a lot of time that you're not going to be able to do what normal students get to do. You know, the parties, the travel, the spring. Like, if you're going to play college baseball, like, you are never going on spring break. If that's something that interests you that you want to do, don't play college baseball because it ain't going to happen. You are playing baseball on spring break. So, you know, those are things that I think you, you know, you might figure out along the way in this process. But, you know, maybe. Maybe that extra year, you know, gets you to the point where it's like, hey, I don't know if this is for me, but if it is, like, you need to have an actual plan for what. What you need to do in order to make your deficiencies better so that you can find yourself in a more advantageous spot coming out of it than going into it.
• 40:44
  Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's probably a good way to sum that up and end today's conversation. Coach, anything else you want to add?
• 40:55
  Speaker B: No?
• 40:56
  Speaker C: All right, well, thank you, everybody, for listening. Tune in next week. We'll have some more talk for you. Talk to you then. Thanks, everybody. Thank you for listening this week. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash that like button for us. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram MD Baseball. If you want to find out what me and Keith do to help families and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball. Com. Take a few minutes to check out our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good information out of that. Thanks again for listening. Check in with you next week.