Signing Day An Important Milestone for Future Utes

Well, today is National Letter of Intent Signing Day for women's soccer players. We have several high school seniors that will be officially joining our Utah team. We've been receiving faxes during the day and expect to have a large class of freshmen joining our team next season. This is an exciting day for our future players and their families as well as for us. After a year or more of going through the recruiting process, it is now in writing that these players will become Utes next August when we start our preseason training.

The process can be a long one. Many of the players signing today came and visited our campus over a year ago as high school juniors. After they checked with other schools and narrowed down their choices, these players made a verbal commitment to come to Utah...that was an exciting day. However, the verbal commitment is non-binding...and things don't become official until the paper work is signed...the earliest day for that is today!

What is the National Letter of Intent (NLI)? It is a document that our recruits sign to let the University of Utah, the Mountain West Conference and the NCAA know that agreement between a school and a recruit stating that the player intends to come to Utah and not to another school. We send out 4 copies of the NLI to each family. They are signed and returned...then we keep a copy, send 1 to the Mountain West offices and 1 to the NCAA. Once it is signed and returned, the commitment is binding and official.

We will have the scoop on our newest Utes...our Class of 20012...in the next few days. Check back on the blog as well as at www.utahutes.com, the official web site for the Utes.