Athletic recruiting for college- does bs help?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
1

I was over on the college side of CC reading about how athletic scholarships are a pipe dream, and it got me thinking about what bs does to the odds of having an athletic hook.

To be clear, I don’t have illusions of kiddo having an athletic hook. But I am curious what people’s expectations/experiences are.

On the one hand, athletic recruitment is a big part of bs. So talent-wise, the college applicant pool is more dense and probably more successful. Also, student have access to “elite” sports (squash, crew, etc) that elite schools like.

On the other hand, it is very difficult to play club sports or do a sport year round.

Do bs college counseling offices assist with athletic recruiting? I remember on a revisit day last year one school had a presentation emphasizing how students got recruited for college sports. And clearly there some schools that are sports powerhouses.

This may be a “duh” question, but is the expectation of having a leg up in college athletic recruiting one of the reasons why people choose bs? If so, did/does it pan out?

2

My impression is that it’s very complicated, depends on the sport and school, and D1 and D3 are very different worlds. This is based up on DS’s experience knowing a lot of kids who are D1 commits in some different sports as well as working with his club coach. DS aspires to play a D3 sport, but it’s by no means a sure thing. My impression is that some D1-bound athletes go to BS to solidify academics and broaden their options, including but not solely through PG years, but may have been committed or on that path prior to BS. Some sports are stronger in BS (lacrosse, crew, e.g.), and BS is likelier to give the kid a leg-up. For a kid like mine, I think BS makes him a more attractive applicant overall, but the recruiting effort is largely on his own, over the summer, though his school coaches would be helpful.

It is hard to do a club sport while at BS, but the kids playing at the highest level manage to do it. Hockey players play on split-season teams in the off-season, and many D-1 bound kids play juniors after high school anyway. The lacrosse off-season is summer (primarily) and fall. Soccer clubs train in the winter and spring. Kids at his school are going all over one Sundays for off-season sports.

I think people say scholarships are a pipe dream because D1 athletic scholarships ARE relatively rare, and even if you get a sports scholarship it’s rarely a full ride. We heard at one presentation that the coach gets a certain amount of scholarship money to allocate over a recruiting class (and that amount will be affected by how important the sport is to the school). There are way more spots at D3 schools, which can’t give athletic scholarships but can take into account desirability of a recruited athlete in awarding merit aid, if their policies permit.

3

I don’t have any experience with bs, but these days I don’t think playing in high school (varsity) is necessary to get recruited for any sport except football. The elite athletes are either playing for highest level club teams or competing in national tournaments.

In fact, some elite club teams don’t allow their players to compete for their high school.

4

This is so “it depends.” For athletes who are targeting academically tippy tops, coming from a BS is a way of ensuring they have the academic “cred” for that. It isn’t unusual for an athlete to do a year of PG (usually after LPS) to shore up on academics for that reason. (They also do it to get another year of growth and strength.) So yes, coming from BS helps in this regard.

After that, it’s really sport dependent. It’s hard for a kid to distinguish himself in football, for example, at most BS. Soccer coaches generally favor kids from elite club teams, not just because of the level of play but for the ease of seeing them at big tournaments. Otoh, BS offer sports like crew and squash that are more niche. Timed sports (swimming, track) are some of the simpler ones for recruiting because a coach doesn’t have to see you play.

In many sports, the focus and travel to be a viable D1 recruit (so scholarship money) is at odds with the BS experience and the BS kids who pull it off are often day students or local boarders whose parents are making extraordinary efforts to make that happen. Not always, but often. Ime, these folks have chosen a prep school with recruitment in mind, as you suggest. And many BS are happy to have these kids for a whole host of reasons (including college matriculations that look great to prospective parents.)

For D3 sports, that still may be the case, but to a lesser extent. If you look at the bios on college sports rosters for the schools and sports that interest you, you’ll get a feel for where kids came from.

At our school, most (not all) of the recruited athletes are going to D3 schools where they can continue to play at a high, but not highest, level without having to make academic sacrifices to do so. But yes, that hook helps!

Personally, I think most day schools are set up to be (and are) more accommodating of families who are prioritizing sports for recruiting but still want solid academics. But that isn’t an option for everyone. And not what you asked.

Anecdotally, DS really got great coaching at BS and really blossomed as a player as a result - very much beyond expectation (recruitment wasn’t a thought when he applied)- and did end up on the radar of coaches. He was not at the level that he had his pick of schools but he had offers of roster spots at several he applied to. All the college coaches asked if they could talk to his BS coach who agreed and was helpful.

This ended up being so long! But in a nutshell, I would say that if it’s a top D1 program you are targeting in a non niche sport, BS is probably not your best choice. If it’s a selective D3 school (i.e., NESCAC), odds are better.

5

I can say, based on our son’s experience, that for certain sports and certain schools, recruitment isn’t even necessary. Our son (a squash player) wasn’t recruited and didn’t try to be. The coach at his college (D3) did reach out to him, but he was very noncommittal in response. He wasn’t sure he wanted to play in college. Eventually, when he decided to go to that college, he also decided to give the squash team a try. Now he loves it and intends to play all 4 years. If he had gone to a D1 school, he would not have been on the varsity team, because they can and do recruit better players. And, incidentally, BS absolutely made this possible, because he would not have tried squash if not for BS. But it wasn’t part of his college admissions process.

6

Parent of D1 recruited athlete in non-revenue, niche, mostly club-based sport. I second many of gardenstategal’s points. Based on my kid’s national results as a middle schooler and the input of a college coach she was training with, we knew that 7D2 might have a shot at being recruitable. For better or for worse, this narrowed her initial BS search a lot…to schools that would allow her to train at a high level. She attended a school with a varsity team in her sport, but left after two years because she never felt the school was a good fit outside of her sport/ability to train at a top club. She finished high school at another BS that did not have her sport at scholastic level, but which was very flexible with regard to her travel/training — and just a better overall fit for her.

I do think going to a BS can help give some academic cred, especially when targeting selective colleges, though kid still has to hit GPA/score thresholds. The school she graduated from had a dedicated CC for athletes, though AFAIK my daughter was the only D1 recruit in her graduating class. We picked BS not for any advantage in recruiting (other than ability to train at high level), but because LPS was unappealing option (for both of our kids, even our older non-athlete).

7

Depends on the sport. For some niche sports, BS does give you a leg up. For other sports, it is a deathblow to any college recruiting. When DD decided to go to BS, I was fully aware (she less so) that she is giving up the prospect of D1 athletic recruitment. Three years later, all of her former club teammates have committed to a D1 school (head-count sport, so full ride) while she barely gets the attention of a few D3 coaches. As she said the other day, “Well it looks like I shot myself in the foot by going to BS. I would have been a better player, my GPA would have been higher, and my SAT score would have been noteworthy had a stayed home.” Except there was no school back home that she loved half as much as she loves her BS. So it was the right call.

8

Interesting. So it isn’t a “duh” question! I would think bs would be the kiss of death for baseball - too short of a season in NE for sufficient playing time during the season, and unless you are a day student you couldn’t play year-round.

I looked at baseball and swimming rosters at some Ivies and similar schools. Not many, if any, baseball players went to bs, but a handful of swimmers did. Lots of private day school kids, though.

One college stat I haven’t seen is percentage of the student body that is on a sports team. For some of the smaller LACs I bet the % is huge. Especially if they field a football team. State schools’ percentages would be small - because the schools are so big. That means ironically small schools may feel more sporty than big D-1’s. Maybe not in the sense of how much the football games are central to the social life, but in how athletic the student body as a whole is.

Huh. Never thought of it that way. The whole “The Ivy League is a sports league” thing makes a lot more sense looking at it from this angle. Of course they prioritize admitting scholar athletes. They are fielding a lot of teams but have small student bodies. Same thing as bs, really.

9

At most of the NESCACs, the stat that we heard is that roughly 40% of the student body will be on a varsity team. That doesn’t mean they will stay on a team for 4 years, and there are also athletes who are on more than one team. If you think about the fact that a class will have about 250 on each gender, that means roughly 100 athletes. Most have about 15 different sports, so you are looking at about 6-7 frosh per team (on average. Some will be higher, some lower.) That actually matches the numbers on rosters if you look. So yes, @CateCAParent , it’s very much like BS.

10

Except not all boarding schools are in the northeast. There are baseball factories in Florida and the Carolinas, there are boarding schools in Texas.

We had a baseball star at our very small private school (only a few international boarding students) and he was drafted out of high school and recruited to either USC or UCLA (can’t remember). Of course, it didn’t hurt that his father is a major sports agent.

11

“there are also athletes who are on more than one team”

@gardenstategal, (((my mind blowing apart))). One college sport seems like a full-time job, year round. Students find the time to do two? Not to mention, for D3’s, even those kinds of amazing athletes don’t get scholarships, and could presumably go elsewhere for less if sports were a priority. So that means they went to their school of choice for academics, not for sports, and they still play two? Wow. Those are some pretty amazing students.

12

Well. Yes! But I think they are also getting to be who they are. If they are lucky, there are cross training benefits. (Nordic skiing and crew.)

There are a handful who do this at the D1 level too. The football/baseball combo is one of the more common, but also football/track. For women, you used to see basketball/volleyball. It usually makes the news when a player has to decide between the MLB and the NFL, but it also makes sense that a superb athlete is superb.

For kicks, read the player profiles of the Stanford football team. It’s amazing how many were all-state in 2 or 3 sports.

13

@GoatMama – is your dd overall ok with the trade-off, now that it has sunk in? I hope so. It sounds like her bs experience is the “forever changed her for the better” kind that every parent hopes for when making the decision for their child to go. College sports feel so fleeting to me - while they certainly can be very important to a person’s development on a lot of levels, you are one knee injury from it being over at any given time. The high school years, on the other hand, are the bedrock for everything that comes after.

14

While true, I believe that the OP was asking about the more academically rigorous boarding schools or at least schools that don’t have a year-round option for the sport. Regardless, as others have mentioned, the answer is “It depends.” It depends on the sport and it depends on the university, along with many other parameters. There will be no one-size-fits-all answer.

15

@CateCAParent Oh yes, she wouldn’t trade her BS years for anything. And you’re right, athletic scholarships are year to year, and you’re always one injury away from losing your free college ride. I am fairly close to a few of her former classmates, all good and smart kids, but the difference in growth and development over the past three years has been striking. So every time I second-guess the sanity of letting my child go away so early, I think of the alternative and I know that it was a good choice and she will benefit from it for life.

16

Really depends on the sport, you local public high school options and the academics at the local school. If you live in an area with super strong public schools with great sports programs, you kid might do better there than at a smaller BS. Since most BS are small, many kids who would not play at a local school get great playtime. The coaches at BS are also very good. Many seem to have a strong background in the sport.
Many BS kids seem to go for the balance of sports and academics. Seems like a large number go for the Div III approach. But then again, there are always superstars who are recruited by the BS in every sport. Those kids seem to have their focus on DI.

17

At the smaller LACs DS is interested in, I’ve typically seen that 30-40% of students are varsity athletes. I’ve heard anecdotally of a few D3 2-sport varsity athletes (particularly at very small schools, where it’s valuable for one recruited kid to fill two athletic slots), but I’ve heard that these kids often don’t stick with 2 sports through college.

18

@twoinanddone – we live in CA and kiddo goes to a CA bs. DH (half) joked about sending kiddo off to one of the baseball farms in Florida! While DH would have loved that, kiddo not so much.

CA is a baseball hotbed, too, but the CA bs’s are mostly too remote to enable club sports for boarders. And they are tiny, so it it hard to field a top notch team or play top notch teams in the league. There aren’t a lot of college scouts attending bs baseball games in CA. If you look at the baseball, swimming, water polo (the more typically CA sports) rosters at “elite” colleges, like I did this morning, they are packed with Californians, but mostly club kids. Where we live, public high schools have amazing sports resources and club sport culture thrives. If college sports were a serious consideration for kiddo, I suppose we would have been nuts to have kiddo go to bs in CA.

So then it gets me thinking about Stanford. Based on info I found on Cappex, it looks like there are 850-ish athletes on teams, out of 7000 undergrads – 12%.* Yet, looking at the rosters, boarding schools are not a notable source of athletes. Nonetheless, CA boarding schools generally seem to do comparatively well for Stanford admissions. Cate and Thacher each average 3 students per year matriculating, out of a 70-ish-senior class each. That seems like a lot to me, as Stanford’s admit rate is around 5%. Maybe that is a legacy thing or a donor thing, but it isn’t really an athlete thing, making 3 all the more impressive. Add in the other bs admits to Stanford, who are also not likely to be athletic recruits (except in a few sports), then bs seems to help the admit rates for the athletically unhooked. Intuitively that makes sense, of course.

Another “duh” question - -why do bs admissions offices emphasize athletic recruitment in sports that aren’t likely to help with college admissions for their students? Are bs sports just an end unto themselves?

*This doesn’t tell the whole story because there appears to be a LOT of club sports at Stanford. Like a whole lot. That’s probably where the bs athletes end up, my guess. But I doubt Stanford is thinking much about club sports in the admissions process.

19

There is a woman who plays hockey and lacrosse at BC, and she is a top athlete in both. For 3 years, she played hockey until the team was eliminated from the NCAA tournament and then played the remainder of the lacrosse season. She is annually up for the Tewaaraton (the heisman trophy of lax) even though she only had stats from half a season. For her senior year, she decided to just play hockey and return for a 5th year to just play lacrosse. Right now (really,now) she’s playing for the national championship. She’s fantastic.

There is one at Stanford who plays soccer and lax, both at a high level. There are many more who play field hockey and lacrosse.

I don’t think they settled for BC or Stanford, but just found the right schools with the right sports combos.

That just isn’t true. Scholarships can be for more than one year, and in some conferences like Big 10 and Pac 12 are for the 4 years by conference rule. The NCAA has protections for athletes from losing or having their scholarships reduced, especially because of injury. The athlete can appeal any reduction in scholarship. I’ve know kids who chose to not continue playing so lost the athletic funding, but never heard of one losing a scholarship because of an injury. In fact, it has usually been the opposite. There was a hockey player at DU who learned immediately after starting his freshman year that, because of a heart condition, he could never play hockey again. The coach honored the scholarship and gave him the next 3 years on scholarship too. It all worked out because that guy is now the head coach, and I believe he’d treat his players the same way.

In the Pac 12, if the student completes two years of playing and then decides to leave the school, he’s entitled to complete his degree on scholarship, even if it is years later.

20

Ok, good to know. I shouldn’t have generalized. In my DD’s sport they typically are year to year. Her coach’s daughters both played in the SEC and lost their scholarship due to injuries. I’m glad to know that’s not the norm.