I say as long as eyes are wide open, it is a yes. Most kids and parents don’t realize the kind of sacrifices a college athlete has to make and underestimate the passion to the sport required to keep making them. My sophomore son plays baseball and loves it. My daughter is a high school junior who has a scholarship for her sport. Having seen her brother, she understands what it means to be a true student-athlete and is looking forward to repping her college!
I agree with @crimsonmom2019. I was an athlete in college many years ago. My son is currently. If you understand the sacrifices required of you to compete at a relatively high level, and appreciate the benefits that really only come from the type of committment required, college sports are absolutely worthwhile. Very few people understand what it is like to have to go to class when you are already physically worn out from 6:00am conditioning, or to write a paper while travelling to an away game. This makes for some very unique and strong relationships. As an example, I just returned from a trip where I spent some time with a couple teammates I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Even though we were not great friends back in the day, and we have not kept in touch, there was still a bond. That is something I think unique to sports.
I’m glad you resurrected this thread, S. Reading your 2010 description of your son’s innate level of motivation, I was at first hesitant to say “Go for it”. But then reading how he transformed and matured along the way – is very encouraging.
My kiddo’s an introvert – and the immediate group of friends (including upperclassmen) helped her transition into a broad network right away. Yes, she’s had to forego some other activities but she thrives in her sport and it’s clearly a joy to the sometimes mundane schoolwork. Thankfully, she’s not unrealistic either and has said she’s not absolutely committed to all four years if her studies/career search/co-ops/internships rise in importance or have conflict. (as a parent, I say “AMEN” – since there’s no real financial future for her after college within her sport)
And to @crimsonmom2019 My youngest (HS sophomore) is seeing what her older sister is doing and is hoping to follow in the same footsteps (same sport, almost same caliber). She came up with that on her own. Not bad!
@T26E4 Son happily headed back to finish sophomore year and begin sports season. His dad and I look forward to going out for a few visits. For the right kids, for the right reasons, athletics can be great!
Not sure the thread should be structured as “regrets” vs “worth it.” College is a time for exploration and for athletes athletics is a part of that exploration. I can’t say that deciding not to be on a team is any less (or more) valid than any other part of the exploration. No different than coming in wanting to major in physics but learning that history is preferred. To be sure, there are some extremely wonderful parts of varsity sports – the camaraderie, the achievements and learning about self – but who is to say that it can only happen in athletics. Who is to say that a choice to leave lax to participate in the theatre is wrong. Some coaches are ogres, like some bosses are ogres. It is not a bad thing in life to learn to identify what is wrong and fix it – and that could mean leaving the sport early for greener pastures.
The hardest part for the most successful may be making the u-turn to find employment after graduation.
But yeah, athletics can be a great part of the college experience. It means whatever it means. We should just not expect or rely on that meaning four years of starting on the varsity team.
Agree with the previous 3 posters on this revived thread. Son was a 3 sport athlete in hs; recruited for football and lacrosse, but pursued lacrosse in college. Picked the school, team, & coaching staff that felt right for him and it turned out to be an awesome experience on every level. Had immediate tribe, like @tonymom mentioned. After fresh. season, coach left, and son was selected by his peers to serve as class rep. on coach search committee that summer, – such an honor. He exhibited great maturity and discretion while interacting with college administration, prospective coaches, his teammates and friends from other schools. I don’t know how other colleges conduct coach searches, but I was very impressed with the voice that was given to the current players during that search. New coach was a great role model and mentor who made an already positive experience even better. Team went to NCAA tournament and advanced further than ever before. New coach reached out to lacrosse alumni & reconnected them with the program by pairing each player with a lax alum mentor. My son had a great alumni mentor who took the role seriously. Son was a captain senior year (with his best friend). First job out of school was through word of mouth from fellow player a year ahead of him. My son has seen how personal references like that can really make the difference when you are in a sea of qualified applicants. That coach is still there and the program is doing great. My son goes back for alumni games, homecoming, etc. He continues to love playing sports and has ventured into coaching rec. league boys’ lacrosse.
My daughter has been extremely happy with college and athletics. She chose a D1 school and a challenging major but the support of the athletics department has made the transition great. Granted she is still a freshman but to this day does not wonder about her school choice or doing athletics at all.
Her team mates, coaches and other athletes have created a small family for her. Unfortunately for us she does not see the need to come home so often either.
I will be surprised if my daughter isn’t happy with her decision to be an athlete. She seems to be the type that needs to know who ‘her tribe’ is – when she went to a new HS in a new state, her field hockey teammates became her first set of friends and she is still close now with many of them. Also she is better with forced structure and the pressure to keep up with grades like the other girls. I think all and all it will be good for her.
Really appreciate this thread as S18 weighs what’s important to him. Over and over we hear that you should not go to a college for your sport that you would not have otherwise attended. I don’t completely agree. Example: Friend’s S was a recruited athlete to a small D1 school there’s no way he would have otherwise attended, now a junior there and has barely seen the field. Nevertheless, he will be the first to say it opened doors, pushed him to explore another part of the country and have a unique experience he would not have otherwise pursued.
Our S is a potential D3 recruit. Without recruitment, he will likely attend a large university and play club. As a recruit, he is being considered by some highly regarded LACs with remarkable educational experiences, personalized attention, and phenomenal internship/job pipelines and alumni networks. He is very much open to the possibility as a recruit but would not choose those colleges otherwise. They are so far out of the wheelhouse of the majority of kids at his high school, who care more about football and frats. Suppose he gets injured, can no longer play, and no longer wants to be there? He can transfer. But DH and I feel that the qualitative experience of being a student-athlete at one of these remarkable colleges is an amazing opportunity that he ought to seize if offered. Ultimately, the choice is up to our S, but this is how we are advising him. Thoughts???
I think there is a difference between being attracted to a school because of the opportunity to play a sport and ONLY wanting to go to that school because of the sport. My daughter attends a school she couldn’t otherwise have attended without playing her sport because she needed the scholarship money. She loves the school for the education too, and would want to stay if she didn’t play her sport, but money would be an issue.
We know several kids who picked their schools just to play lacrosse and they didn’t last long. Then the issue is whether they’ve given up other opportunities available only to freshmen - merit scholarships, chance to be recruited (with admissions help or scholarships), time and money invested in that first school. It’s not a fatal mistake, but the kids I know do regret it and wished they had just gone with the flagship or another choice from the beginning. They missed out on living in the dorms as freshmen (most sophomores don’t live in the dorms), joining Greek life, doing some of the traditional freshman things. Not fatal, but still not the same as the other kids experienced by starting out at that school.
I agree with @twoinanddone. The great thing about getting recruited is that it gives students exposure to and an opportunity to attend schools that might not otherwise be on their radar. The point that people are trying to make is that student athletes should consider whether they would still like/choose School X if they were not playing the sport.
Stuff happens. Athletes get injured. The student-athlete balance can be very tippy. Team dynamics can change in unexpected ways. I have a son who just left his team (for solid reasons and on good terms), and one who’s still on, and I’m very happy they both chose a school that they love for reasons beyond the sport. You just don’t know what the future holds. It’s good to hear all the success stories, but there are many kids who also leave teams after a few years for various reasons–and most of their parents aren’t posting here anymore.
That said, for students like the OPs, I’ve found as a college instructor that participating in a sport can actually give them the academic discipline they need to succeed. On the other hand, if the team energy tends in the wrong way, it can bring everyone down, and particularly bright students with iffy work ethics. All of which is why I’m a big believer in college sports–as long as the academic/geographic/social fit is as good as the athletic one.
My daughter’s team has had players leave every year. It’s a new sport to the school, so of the 9 freshmen recruits her year, 2 left the team after a year but both stayed at the school. The next year had 7 recruits and one transferred after a year. There were also a handful of players who had played in high school and were walk-ons. The coach kept them for a year or even two because she needed warm bodies, but they are all gone now that the coach has the numbers (3 recruiting classes). There were 4 soccer players who play(ed) as a second sport, and 2 lefts during the first season, one graduated last year and one remains but gave up soccer.
Since the school is STEM focused, it is not the right school for everyone even if they are great players/rowers/golfers/skaters/runners/pitchers. The school has to be a good fit too. The schools that don’t seem to work for kids we know were LACs in rural areas, smaller state schools in smaller cities, schools with huge teams in their sports so they don’t get playing time. Most of the kids played on state championship teams and they expect the same level of play to be high. Sometimes it is TOO high, sometimes it is like a bad high school team, but often they are no longer the stars, no longer the starters. When my daughter was looking at schools and especially at this new program, I warned her that the level of play might not be the same as she was used to. She knew she’d get a lot of playing time and I was pretty sure she’d lose a lot of games. Turns out that 5 of the 22 on her team this year were on her club team, so the level of play is EXACTLY the same!
For D1, being an athlete helped her get admitted to one of the best schools in the country, kept her healthy, and gave her great friends with whom she still stays in contact after graduation. She absolutely loved every aspect of participating on the team. Even when the coaching situation became disappointing for her (3 new coaches in 4 years, the last of which was not a good fit), and when for various reasons she did not develop in her sport as she had hoped, she still stuck with it.
I do think her GPA would have been higher without such a large commitment of her time and energy put into running all three seasons, and that in turn negatively impacted her chances landing a job at some larger consulting and investment firms. (She was an econ and public policy double major. I would think kids who want to go on to med or law school need to chose their schools wisely.) In general, not being an athlete would have made it much easier to handle the demands of internship and job hunting, which sometimes entailed flights across the country for interviews. It was really really tough to juggle her classes, her sport, and job hunting. She found that many of her fellow athletes did not experience the same struggles because either they planned to go pro afterward, or had wealthy and well-connected parents who essentially got them jobs in their own or a friend’s company, or just planned to wait until after graduation to look because they didn’t have student loans to worry about. That whole situation was the biggest negative to college athletics in my opinion, since sometimes the coach didn’t quite understand why D needed to miss practices for interviews, etc. when the other kids never did.
@TheGFG My son wishes to participate in XC/track during college as well and I have the same feelings you articulated above. To me, the point of college is to get a career when your done. If not, then he can be unemployed without even going to college. I fear running will interfere with that overall purpose. He needs a high GPA as you mentioned. Companies will not even look at you below a certain GPA. He needs it just to competitive. I hope he is mature enough to see this and will quit if his grades suffer.
The good thing about college distance running is that the better programs don’t race the kids that often. Maybe every other weekend. My younger daughter is not as strong as a student or as good of a runner, but really wants to compete so she is going Div. III. One benefit of that is Div III schools tend to compete more locally, ie. only a 2 or 3 hour bus ride away. Her sister’s team was a top program, so they often flew far to big meets, which meant missing classes if you couldn’t avoid scheduling a class on Fridays. Changing time zones or altitude meant that the coach might want them at the meet site a day or two early to acclimate. D wasn’t good enough to go to those bigger meets usually, so that didn’t affect her much, except for the time she flew from CA to NY for a meet. So I’d look at who else is in the conferences of schools your son is interested in to be sure his school is centrally located relative to their competitors or not too far away if not central. For example, the Ivy League often competes in Boston indoors so Harvard has it easy, and for outdoors you might not want to be at Dartmouth when it’s time for Penn Relays.
My DD chose to play her sport at the club level and her team is ranked 4th nationally (yes they have weekly national rankings). She can commit time as available and the level is on par with her competitive club days during HS. Mainly it has allowed her to do many more things that varsity sports would not allow. She is a project manager for a business consulting club (talk about learning leadership and teamwork), she joined the ski club and has taken trips to Colorado and Tahoe during season (talk about fitness). She has time to be on boards and committees. But mainly she excelled enough in the classroom and was involved in enough leadership activities to get accepted into a highly competitive undergraduate business school. I highly doubt playing a varsity sport would have been a better option.