College messages and requests to meet

What it is

College messages is where a college coach and your family talk. A verified college coach cannot message a player out of the blue. They send one request to meet, and only when your family says yes does a conversation open. A parent is on every conversation with a player under 18.

How to use it

1. When a college coach asks to meet, you get a notification and College messages appears in your menu with a count of what is new.
2. Open College messages. Under Requests to meet you see who the coach is, their school, level and conference, the note they wrote, and where and when they hope to meet. Open About this coach for their bio and what they recruit.
3. Choose Accept or Not now. Nothing is shared with the coach and no chat opens until you accept.
4. After you accept, the conversation opens. Open it to read the messages and write back. You can also open it later from Conversations.
5. If a conversation makes you uncomfortable, use the safety options on the conversation to block the coach, or to report them.
6. The College interest alerts switch at the top turns notifications off when a college coach views or stars your athlete.

Rules and limits

• Who answers: for a player under 18, the parents answer requests to meet. A player 18 or older answers their own. A player under 13 never uses this page, because their parent speaks for them.
• A player aged 13 to 17 can read and join the conversation once a parent has accepted. A parent is always on it and sees every message.
• A coach can have one request waiting at a time. If it is not answered in 14 days it expires. If you choose Not now, that coach cannot ask again for 30 days. A coach can send up to 10 new requests a day to anyone.
• Answered requests stay in your list for 30 days, with an Open chat link for the ones you accepted. If another parent already answered, you are told it was already answered.
• A coach's messages cannot contain links, email addresses, phone numbers or social handles, and a coach cannot send more than 3 messages in a row before someone from your family answers. Messages and requests are checked automatically and logged for review.
• Only a coach with a verified college email can write. Their account must be active. If it is suspended, the conversation closes and you can still read it.
• Anyone in the family can block a coach. The coach is not told. For a player under 18, only a parent can unblock. Reporting a coach sends the report to our team and also blocks the conversation.
• A blocked or closed conversation is read-only until it is unblocked.
• A player under 18 with no linked parent cannot be messaged at all, so the conversation stays hidden until a parent is linked.

Edge cases

• If College messages is not in your menu, no coach has written or asked to meet yet. The page stays out of the way until there is something to show.
• If messaging has not been switched on yet, requests to meet do not appear and cannot be answered. Anything already in a conversation can still be read.
• A coach can also post a short note that they plan to be at one of your tournaments, or that they are there now. These appear in the conversation as notes from the coach.
• Replies are up to 2,000 characters. You can send up to 60 replies an hour.
• Blocking from the web and from the mobile app works the same way.