Erin Caldwell has signed a four-year full athletic scholarship with the University of Georgia and will play number three singles for the Bulldogs from September. She arrived at Rowan Hall aged six for a Saturday red-ball group because a school friend went, and she leaves eleven years later on the American college route we recommended to her at sixteen.
Her story is the one we tell most often to parents who ask why their child has not been moved up a group. Erin was third or fourth in every group she was ever in. Her file from those years is full of technical notes and almost empty of results, and the technical notes are what an American coach asked for by name.
What the file says
Twenty-two termly written reviews, going back to 2014. Every stage she moved through was signed off on checkpoints rather than a birthday, and her LTA rating moved from 10.2 to 3.9 without a single stage skipped. Three US coaches read the folder before they watched her play.
The written reviews are what got me the scholarship. Six years of them, in one folder.
Erin Caldwell
The full story — the eleven-year pathway, the two years planned backwards from a recruitment calendar, and what Erin and her mother say about the decisions we made along the way — is on the alumni page.
