Hampshire continues to be one of my son’s top contenders, though we’re still waiting to hear from 3 more schools. While he’s never been into team sports, he loves to swim, and is good enough to swim at a Division 3 school (but not any higher level). It looks like Hampshire has a pool, but doesn’t have competitive swimming at varsity or club level. He’s not necessarily looking to compete, but likes the structure and focus of coached practices. Does anyone (@BTMell or @ALF) know if it’s possible to practice with teams at the other schools in the 5 college consortium?
Hi - I don’t know the answer to your question - I know, shocking haha My son has done some martial arts - he’s a second degree blackbelt in taekwondo - but never pursued anything across the consortium. The folks at OPRA (Outdoor Programs and Recreational Athletics) would know I’ll bet. Their number is 413.559.5470 The director is Robert Garmirian, who’s really nice - his email is rgarmirian@hampshire.edu I’m betting he can point you in the right direction too. The pool at Hamp is really nice!
I’m quite sure that students wanting to participate in intercollegiate sports must be matriculated at the college in question. So, 5-college students may only participate in intercollegiate sports at their ‘home’ institution. I don’t know if a swimming coach at one of the other colleges would be willing to help a non-competitor train, but that would probably be on an ad-hoc basis, depending on the coach. Since Mt. Holyoke and Smith are out of the picture for obvious reasons, that leaves only Amherst and UMass as potential candidates. I’d suggest that your son contact those two programs to see if they would let him work with their teams.
Our daughter was a lifeguard at Hampshire and hung out with the pool rats for a while. It seemed like there was a group of students who pursued a rather rigorous workout schedule.
Thank you both. He is in the process of trying to set up an overnight visit, and we’ve encouraged him to come up wiht a list of 5-10 things that he’s seeking in a college so that he can look at and rank each of them as he visits his top contenders. On another (somewhat bragging) note, I just fielded a call for him from a math professor at Hampshire who wants to talk to him about his math interests. We shall see…
Brag away - that’s so exciting! So nice to be wanted 