Kendall Bates, sister of Emily Bates, a defender in the 2018 class has committed to Texas A&M

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This one is dear to my heart.

Carlina is a beast (I mean that in a good way, fantastic soccer player)

Finally updated all the Fall commitments and updated the 2016-2019 recruiting classes.

Some quick thoughts:

> The 2016 class is a bit down compared to par for A&M, but I do think Jordan Hill is better than her current ranking and Jenna Byers is a solid prospect. After that we have some good players but they might need to develop some to become starters.

> The 2017 class is just getting better and better, especially now with the recent explosion onto the national scene of Rheagan Smith, who was recently called up by the U-18 National Team, and Alexandria Griffin, who is now nationally ranked as I predicted some time ago. This class now boasts six 4-stars with a couple of them (McCain, Cooper) borderline 5-stars. I'm very excited about this class. They could form a nucleus with Harvey/Pounds class to make a run at the College Cup.

> The 2018 class has gone heavy defense with some top prospects in Karlina Sample and Kendall Bates. I also think Tera Ziemer is going to be a special player at A&M (her sister who signed with Virginia was a 5-star prospect).

> Ali Russell is an early commitment for the 2019 class but she is an electric player. I think she's still underrated and I expect her to climb the rankings as she can really makes things happen offensively.

> While we have some really good talent coming in over the next several years, I am a bit concerned that we're not committing some of the elite 5-star type talent that can get A&M to another College Cup. Harvey and Pounds were Top 10 prospects in 2014, so we haven't seen any commitments from the Top 25 since then. There were several kids in Texas that we have missed on in the 2016 and 2017 classes that would have been great players for us. In 2018 there is still one uncommitted prospect and in 2019 there are two still available in Texas. We need to start signing a couple of these kids every few years to give ourselves a chance when we face a Florida St, Virginia, UCLA, or Stanford in the NCAA tournament. Overall I'm happy with our current classes but we really need some more elite talent to compete for a national title.

A&M picked up the commitment of Katie Smith for the 2019 class. A top 100 prospect nationally, she gives A&M two solid 4-stars to build the foundation of the class. Katie plays forward, so we could have an issue with 5-6 talented forwards looking for playing time. My guess is that a few of them will slide back to the midfield as that group is looking a bit thin starting in 2018.