HARRISONBURG — When the NCAA made changes to its offseason basketball recruiting policies, the goal was to lessen the influence of sneaker and apparel companies and swing the balance back toward high school programs.

The result this summer may have simply been limiting the number of opportunities for players in state’s such as Virginia to showcase their abilities in front of college coaches, but coaches at various levels are optimistic that is something that may improve in years to come.

“It’s very, very different,” James Madison coach Louis Rowe said. “The preference for me as a mid-major coach is that kids don’t get missed. But you have to work under the parameters of the NCAA. My coaches and myself are having to make adjustments. But I’m always a wait-and-see guy, so I wouldn’t kill it just yet.”

Changes to the recruiting calendar for 2019 allowed college coaches one evaluation period in April, during which so-called “AAU” events sponsored by companies such as Nike, Adidas and Under Armour provided the best opportunities for college coaches to observe high school-aged prospects.

The NCAA also eliminated the traditional July evaluation period, a month that had long been one of the most intense recruiting times of the year. That meant instead of watching players in sneaker-sponsored tournaments in July, the only opportunities to see players in the summer would be during the weekends of June 21-23 and June 28-30. Those events would fall under the purview of state high school athletic associations, rather than shoe companies.

The biggest problem, however, was the fact associations in more than 30 states opted out of hosting tournaments. The National Federation of High Schools cited cost, Title IX compliance, insurance concerns and other issues among reasons for abstaining.

Among those to choose not to participate was the Virginia High School League, which governs the commonwealth’s public schools. VHSL teams would be allowed to play in Washington D.C.-sanctioned events.

The large-scale changes began about a year ago with the formation of the Rice Commission to address the college basketball scandal that saw multiple NCAA assistant coaches arrested by the FBI along with agents and sneaker company representatives.

“It all happened so quickly,” East Rockingham boys basketball coach Carey Keyes said. “It started in August when they changed those cycles. Quick decisions had to be made. They wanted to minimize the AAU season in the summer and bring it back to the high schools, but it all happened so quickly no one was really prepared to have the thing and Virginia is not the only state.”

Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association will host teams both weekends at the Blue Ridge School in Green County, but even that didn’t go off without a hitch. The NCAA originally wrote the rules such that events would have to be held by associations that are members of the NFHS, which only accepts one athletic association per state.

Many states, such as Virginia, have separate associations for public and private schools and Virginia and Washington D.C. were two that only received clearance from the NCAA to host their events less than a week ago.

Though slots are filling up and Blue Ridge School coach Cade Lemke said he’s already heard from more than 30 college programs interested in attending, there’s still be some misunderstanding over who can play.

“It is open to any independent school in a several state radius are able to come and participate,” Lemke said. “The confusion has been there are public schools that have been reaching out wanting to play. But because there are events out there that the NFHS teams can play in, they are not allowed to play in the other.”

Virginia, Maryland and Florida are among the states where NFHS-sanctioned high school associations decided not to participate, and happen to be three states JMU has recruited heavily since Rowe, who is entering his fourth season, took over.

“We just have to figure out how we are going to get in front of another kid with the rules the way they are,” Rowe said. “A lot of kids go under the radar and it’s hard to evaluate a great number of kids, so there are concerns. But again, we got to go through it and then we’ll see.”