Like many of you I’m sure, my Facebook feed has recently been filled with photos from Signing Day ceremonies across the country. Congratulations to all those who have officially achieved their dream of becoming a member of a college softball team.

Yet as the classic W.W. Jacobs tale “The Monkey’s Paw” illustrates, getting your wish isn’t necessarily all sunshine and puppy dogs. It can come with a variety of unforeseen consequences that can turn a positive into a negative so it’s important that players and their families enter into this next phase of their careers with their eyes wide open.

Probably the biggest risk factor new college players must understand is that college softball at all levels is a business. Sure, you can probably still find some places where it’s still considered more of an extracurricular activity.

But for the most part being a head softball coach at a college isn’t a sideline or an avocation; it’s someone’s job,. And keeping that job depends on the team performing well, which means the head coach in particular probably isn’t going to have a lot of time for you if you’re not able to help him/her put Ws on the scoreboard.

I recently heard about a highly touted local player who went to play at a Power 5 (P5) conference team – one of those you’ll often see on TV at the Womens College World Series (WCWS). A couple of years ago there was tremendous excitement when she received her offer and signed the paperwork; the future looked rosy indeed.

Fast forward a couple of years and she’s been told she’s no longer on the team and her scholarship has been taken away. Not for doing anything bad or against the rules as I understand it. As far as I know (and I honestly don’t know her personally) she’s a fine, upstanding student athlete and a true team player.

Instead, she was basically shown the door because the coaching staff didn’t feel she was good enough to compete for a starting role and decided to give her spot to someone they thought might do better. If that girl doesn’t, in a couple of years she’ll probably suffer the same fate. That’s just business.

But that’s not the only bad thing that can happen. There have been plenty of stories about college softball coaches who are physically, emotionally, and/or verbally abusive to their players.

I’m not talking about coaches who lose their tempers after a tough loss or throw a clipboard now and then or make their teams run foul poles after sleepwalking through a game they should have won. That can happen even with caring coaches.

No, I’m talking about those who still subscribe to the idea that they need to intimidate and abuse and belittle their players on a constant basis to get them to perform. Then, if anyone complains the coach calls them weak (among other names) and tries to get the rest of the team to ostracize them and drive them out so they don’t have to be accountable for their abuses.

In a time when suicide rates among young females continue to rise according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that sort of approach can have far-reaching affects on young lives. And their families.

Not all of the negatives are so dire, though. One thing that is an eye-opener to many players entering college is how little the coaching staff may actually know about the technical aspects of the game.

It’s easy to assume that someone coaching at a high level has worked hard to gain expertise in skills such as hitting, pitching, throwing, fielding, general human movement, etc., and are constantly looking for new information that can give their players an edge. Yet as many have discovered to their chagrin, that is not always the case.

There appears to be plenty of coaches who figure they learned everything they needed to learn years ago and thus don’t need to keep up with new developments. Old dogs, new tricks, and all.

But that thinking isn’t limited to the old guard. Even young coaches fresh off their playing days can fall prey to it.

They assume that because they were successful they should teach the current crop of players what they were taught, without ever looking to see if that is what they actually did. They repeat the same old cues and use their position of power to force compliance onto the players under their control.

And what happens if that coaching makes the current players worse? Do they look into it and think maybe they should reconsider what they were saying?

Sometimes, perhaps. But more often than not, if a player’s performance or metrics go down, they simply move on to the next player who is performing at the required level. Sad to say, but many a career has been stunted or dashed completely all because of a lack of understanding about A) the core concepts of a particular skill, and B) how an individual’s DNA, body type, conditioning approach, mental approach and more can affect how their body moves in space.

Look, I’m not saying playing college softball has to be a bad experience. To the contrary, I know many, many former players who cherish those years – even some who experienced some level of the issues discussed above.

But it’s important to go into it with complete awareness of the risks that accompany the rewards so you’re more ready to face those challenges.

Like anything else, college softball has its upsides and downsides. If you go into it knowing what the pitfalls can be (rather than viewing it all through the proverbial rose-colored glasses) you’ll stand a much better chance of creating a positive experience – and choosing a program that best matches your personality and playing ability so you spend your four years of eligibility on the field instead of watching from the bench. Or the stands.