<p>for all the parents helping their kids through this recruiting season be prepared for the backhanded compliments that are coming, from "friends". Or worse straightforward insults.</p>
<p>here are a few that I heard:</p>
<p>your D took my daughters spot
wouldn't have gotten in without her sport
congratulations, title 9 really helped her</p>
<p>the assumption that the athlete could not get in on academics alone is insulting to these kids and how hard they have worked. </p>
<p>my advice, don't go quietly pass these comments, defend your kid!</p>
<p>Agree 100% with pacheight. Don’t let the snarky comments roll off your back in this case. Your son or daughter worked/works way to hard for these people to make ignorant comments. And yes, they are ignorant because they have no clue what they are talking about. Educate them!</p>
<p>My response to those comments was typically along these lines:</p>
<p>“Wow, you really don’t understand how this process works do you. Do you want me to explain it to you?”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>“My son has been pursuing an athlete “scholarship” for 2.5 years and committed to this school last September. He was admitted in December. How long have you pursuing XYZ college? Do you realize you were competing against others in regular decision, and not my son?”</p>
<p>Bleh, the way I see it is that if you’re secure in the thought that you deserve your spot in a school (and the vast majority of us should be) then smile back at the comments, explain, or do whatever. But to let it be a true affront to your self-esteem is to have self-doubt in your worthiness.</p>
<p>fenway south: I love your line: “Wow, you really don’t understand how this process works do you. Do you want me to explain it to you?” Makes me laugh! It would be entertaining just to watch the variety of expressions that their faces would make - particularly boredom by the very end, because I just might be tempted to give blow by blow accounts of the 12 months that passed between the beginning of the process and the day the Likely Letter arrived…</p>
<p>pacheight: I have heard that Title 9 comment SO many times…snore…I almost just want to say “yup! Title 9 is working out really well for us! See you!” - I mean honestly, what a ridiculous thing to say! </p>
<p>the affront is that it’s demeaning to the kid to have a parent imply to you and others in your community that your child is not academically qualified or as competent academically as their kids, and only got in with the athletic “loophole”. </p>
<p>I got down to a short and objective reply that always stunned them into silence, “my kid got 2300 on her SAT, what your kid get???”</p>
<p>I’m old enough to remember what it was like before Title 9, I was in high school when Title 9 passed. My recollection is that after Title 9 sports for girls just exploded. It turned out that girls could compete at a level few people realized they could, if not at the same level as then boys very close to it.</p>
<p>If you have a girl in sports you should be grateful for Title 9 because Title 9 did help her, I’m old enough to remember.</p>
<p>Ughh, just happened to me again! We have not spoken to many people about my daughter being recruited. We have kept it on a need to know basis. Now that her fall sport has begun and she is at the local pool every day, apparently word has gotten around. I assume her coach told another coach because my daughter has not told anybody at her school and only her closest friends from her club sport know. </p>
<p>So, I got a call today from a former teammate’s mom, questioning me about recruiting. It started off innocently enough, with me giving her some general do’s and don’ts guidelines. I was careful to speak in generalities and not make reference to my daughter. Finally, the mom came right out and asked me if it was true that she was being recruited by Ivy League schools and said that all the parents were talking about it yesterday! I said that she was and she told me that so and so said that it was really easy to get into an Ivy if you are recruited. Then she said that my daughter was lucky that she switched sports. As if she could not get recruited in her first sport! Oh and it’s a good thing she is a girl, they have lower academic standards for girls. I am rarely at a loss for words, but I was speechless. </p>
<p>And we have a meet at that dang pool on Monday… Fenway, I think I am going to be using this line a lot!</p>
<p>“Wow, you really don’t understand how this process works do you. Do you want me to explain it to you?”</p>
<p>@fishymom – That’s quite a phone call. There isn’t any way you could have kept this news a secret for long, it’s just too big a deal to have someone attending an Ivy League school, let alone be recruited by one. Most people will just be impressed, as am I.</p>
<p>As the parent of an athlete who is trying to play his sport in college, but isn’t recruited, I think we would be so ecstatic that NOTHING could bring us down.</p>
<p>From watching my parents and their friends as I’ve gotten older, it seems like groups of parents only remain close friends when their children have similar achievement levels. Makes sense- when you’re a parent, you talk about your kids a lot. However, your peer group as your kids go through college is probably going to change.</p>
<p>D just began her freshman year at college, so we’re past the stage of those initial rude comments about her admission. To be honest, D mostly had trouble with this type of jealousy earlier on as a high school freshman and sophomore. In junior year, letting the SAT score slip out did wonders to head off those back-handed compliments!</p>
<p>But I have to admit that lately I’ve experienced moments of panic worrying about how D’s going to do in her sport this year. If she doesn’t do well enough–it’s a timed sport so that will be easy to assess–will we have to listen to a lot of nasty remarks? I say this because there were definitely a number of people who thought we were completely delusional to believe that the coaches of D’s university were seriously interested in recruiting her. Just this week I came across an old e-mail from the head of a state organization for D’s sport who had written: “There’s no way your D is a top recruit for X school. The coaches are lying to you.” Well, maybe they were lying, but what’s true is that D is there at X school right now and on the team!</p>
<p>Two things are going on here. First, there’s the familiarity-breeds-contempt principle. How can someone from our town have “made it big”? It can’t be! Secondly, there’s the principle of self-defense. When someone local is succeeding in public fashion, some parents and students can feel like they’ve failed because they/their S or D had the same opportunities, same coaches, same or greater talent, etc. but didn’t accomplish as much. They have to find some fault with your kid or some way to belittle your child’s accomplishment.</p>
<p>I have had many athletes in my classes who were excellent students. But many others would not have been acccepted had it not been for their athletic prowess. However, saying this to them or their parents is as inappropriate as telling Aunt Esther that you think her Easter bonnet is ugly. I cannot condone any of the snide remarks. </p>
<p>Having said all that, I got a chuckle from at least some of the indignation here. A while back I posted on the “Just smile and nod” thread in the Parents’ forum. I mentioned that a Harvard alum had asked me about D’s college search. When I told him that she had been accepted by every school to which she applied, he opined that she should have applied to some reach schools. That was a bit of a cut, as it hinted that her options (which included multiple Ivys) were not up to snuff. I told him that she only applied to schools that she would have wanted to attend, without specifically mentioning his alma mater. That post elicited this response: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I mention this only because the poster who offered this comment is one of the aggrieved posters on the current thread. He who lives by the sword …</p>
<p>fish: it’s lonely at the top. we’ve found that the parents who have been supportive are the ones who also have recruited athletes, recruited to any school, not just elites. I actually think most of the parents in our community were jealous as well as many of my daughters classmates. It was a common refrain for my D to hear from her “smart” classmates “you took my spot” when she was signed last November to an elite school. And it’s true that every parent in the community with seniors knew…including many neighboring high schools, parents. It was wild. I think there would have been less of a rumor mill had it been a murder.</p>
<p>and i heard most of these parents I know (and some I had just met) say some version of, “oh she got in because of her sport”. </p>
<p>Tier 1, brand name colleges is the new status symbol, it’s not your car or your country club or your big house, it’s where your kid got in to college…and that is one of the reasons why parents are so competitive and jealous towards our talented, smart, hardworking athletes.</p>
<p>The jealous parents just can’t accept that our kids are more talented, smart, and hardworking then their little johnny:)</p>
<p>I do believe title 9 is the reason women’s sports are now so big and well funded. We have Richard Nixon to thank for that legislation, he had a daughter and supported equal rights…but title 9 is not “why” my daughter got recruited by stanford, columbia, duke, ucla, cal, usc, princeton and michigan. title 9 is why 100,000’s of girls have opportunity but it’s not why my D or any female athlete represented on this board got in.</p>
<p>The got in because they are talented, smart, and hardworking…and in most cases harder-working than the other kids in their community and in their sport.</p>
<p>I think as parents of athletes at selective schools we need to own the fact that our kids can compete academically; however, without their sport, their chances of getting in would have been less. They certainly wouldn’t have been guaranteed a spot in October of their senior year! But these students bring incredible “added value” by being willing to represent their college on the field of play, giving up hundreds of hours during their college years to practice, travel and compete, and they also contribute in the classroom and bring home the grades. They earn their places at these schools.</p>