This message is designed to provide some updates on Golden Bear's recruiting policy. For starters, here's a little context:

Over the years, Golden Bear has taken a stand against recruiting practices that can best be characterized as "predatory." Make no mistake, we have always engaged in recruiting and believe that it can be a benefit to players, parents, and teams. But we've seen a lot that can't be considered beneficial to players or families. Here are a few examples: Take-it-or-leave-it offers, teams formed weeks or even months in advance of tryouts, many types of promises.

All of these tactics, and others, involve a common theme: experienced, adult coaches applying pressure to young student-athletes.

These practices have no regard for the best interests of the player. They shift control of the process from families to the club, and intentionally prevent families from making informed decisions.

The bottom-line question for Golden Bear is how to recruit in a manner consistent with our values. This means helping anyone who might want to play on a Golden Bear to get all the information they need to make an informed decision.

Our answer is to conform our policies to what we believe is most important: players and parents should be empowered to get all the information they want before making a decision. We have to trust that parents, if they choose to, will ensure that their daughters have full access to reliable information before committing to a club.

Here, then, are some of the recruiting policies Golden Bear will follow:

1. Parental consent. We will obtain parental consent before initiating recruiting dialogue with any new player.
2. Informed decisions. We will encourage players to gather all relevant information before committing to a club.
3. Promises. Golden Bear coaches will not make any promises or guarantees that have any degree of uncertainty.
4. Withdrawal of offers. No offer to play on a Golden Bear team will be withdrawn until at least 72 hours after tryouts, and later whenever possible. No offer will ever be made on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
5. Negative recruiting. Golden Bear coaches will not criticize other clubs.

While these policies will only apply to Golden Bear, perhaps we can set a higher standard.

Feel free to forward this to anyone, regardless of club affiliation.

Thanks for reading this through, and Go Bears!