Exactly how do college coaches communicate with players these days? A lot more texting, and a lot less face time.

The Globe surveyed nine Massachusetts coaches from different sports across the three NCAA divisions to ask about their communication with players.

How do they reach them and get the best out of them, while also coaching them hard? Where are the lines drawn in these relationships? What frameworks are in place to help them safely communicate? What makes for good communication, anyway?

Negative player-coach interactions were at the heart of recent allegations levied by former players against two former Boston University’s women’s soccer coaches, Nancy Feldman and Casey Brown. Brown denied claims that she crossed the line when dealing with players. Feldman has not responded to them.

According to professors of behavioral sciences, coaches should collaborate with their athletes about development, empower them to make choices that affect the team, and show they care about their players’ well-being while maintaining a professional distance.

“We know that if someone’s playing a college sport at the D1 level, they need to be mentally tough,” said Dan Gould, professor emeritus in the department of kinesiology at Michigan State. “As a coach, I’m trying to protect their mental health, while at the same time trying to toughen them up. There’s a lot of art to that.”

Coaches also keep tabs on their players through texts and direct messages. Group chats are good for organizing and morale. They can get their points across through the use of detailed statistics and video. They should not convey their feelings through emojis, as a friend might.

Any digital communication “should always lead to a face-to-face, human-to-human interaction,” said Tunisha Singleton, a professor at Howard University and UNLV. “That’s what reinforces trust. That’s what helps build a supportive environment where players feel valued and seen.”

At UMass Lowell, Shannon LeBlanc’s field hockey players check in daily on an app, rating 1 to 10 how they are eating, sleeping, and feeling. Athletic trainers, necessarily close to players, relay information to coaches as needed. Strength coaches, assistants, and team captains help fill the gaps.

Regardless, it can be difficult to truly get to know what players are feeling. And coaches can — and should, experts say — only go so far to find out.

Some players, coaches say, let their devices do most of the talking. College players in 2025 have had a significant chunk of their school experience altered by COVID, which pushed them toward screens more than before.

That can make it difficult to get a message through.

“This generation now is less comfortable physically speaking to each other, whether face to face or on the phone,” said Bertini, in her 20th season at Westfield State.

“Even on the bus, we’re not always speaking to each other. When I played, we were in the back of the bus planning what we were doing for dinner when we got back. Now they’re doing it in a big group text.

“I’m hoping it kind of goes back the other way. You can’t replace a face-to-face conversation.”

Sometimes, colored magnets are the conversational gambit. When Babson women’s volleyball players check in for practice, they visit a whiteboard in the players’ room, and place a green, yellow or red magnet next to their name.

“If we see red, we’re checking in: Do they have a sore shoulder from spiking too many balls?” said coach Eric Neely, who said he borrowed the analog idea from the University of Arkansas. “If we see a lot of yellows and reds, we’re going to dial it back.”

They also have magnets for mental health: blue or white, to signify clear skies or clouds. A string of cloudy days means a chat about more than the day’s weather.

LeBlanc feels fortunate that her office is located in the school’s central athletics hub, which allows her to see her players outside of practice times without being invasive.

“Being in their space, but not in their way, is super important,” said LeBlanc, who is in her 24th season. “It allows for those authentic conversations: ‘Oh, you have a big exam tomorrow, good to know.’ I can tell she’s stressed, so I won’t go hard on her today.”

Boston College’s Earl Grant concedes he doesn’t know a few of his players all that well.

That says nothing about his prowess as men’s basketball coach. It does speak to how the communication in his sport has shifted.

The NCAA in 2021 began allowing free transfer and NIL deals among players in Division 1 football, baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, and men’s hockey.

Now, rather than build trust over time, some major-college coaches speed-run through the transfer portal. A few Zoom meetings with the player and their advisers might deliver a coach the centerpiece of next season’s roster. Keeping them on campus is another matter.

“You used to know the mother, father, siblings, AAU coach, trainer, girlfriend, and he visited campus two or three times,” Grant said. “Now with the portal, that communication is more like three weeks.”

BC’s front office — which includes a newly hired general manager; Danya Abrams’s job focuses on “recruitment and retention” — scouts players, deals with player agents, digs up character references, and recommends recruits based on their analytics database. Coaches still visit high school juniors and try to sell them on the program, but that legwork might not help land a four-year starter.

On Senior Day last year, BC celebrated three outgoing players, each of whom had been on campus for about seven months.

For players in NIL sports, largely ages 18-24, the idea of fast and significant riches can complicate player-coach relationships beyond the usual gripes about playing time.

“There’s so many voices in young people’s heads,” UMass men’s basketball coach Frank Martin said. “We as coaches have to have so much patience.”

In Neely’s Division 3 program at Babson — which counts one New Englander, Hingham’s Lilly Steiner, among 18 players from 10 far-flung states — coaches and players have biweekly lunches with a non-volleyball topic on the agenda. They might share a time social media was a negative influence in their lives, or discuss someone important to them.

“We’ll talk from the heart about that,” Neely said. “It’s a starting point to talk about ourselves and be human with each other.”

Neely keeps his boundaries. He avoids politics and religion, but players know about his family and hobbies.

“And the music I listen to,” he said, “even though I don’t make them listen to it.”

Matt Porter can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @mattyports.