I am going to give my two cents to everyone on college athletics. This is just my opinion.
Fact very few college athletes move onto the next level where they are getting paid to play their sport.
It is a great thing if your child can get a athletic scholarship whether it be a full-ride or a partial. Partial scholarships are more common in the less popular sports. Also it is great if athletics can help your child get into a selective college. Please know this before spending money and time going for the brass ring. Sports in college is a job. It takes up a ton of time. Usually at least 20 hours a week and most likely more. Depending on the sport the athlete might have to be up at 5AM for practice or weights/conditioning. Some sports almost never stop officially. For example, track and swimming the kids must train year around just to maintain. I know swimmers that never got any better in college and some got worse. Also I know a swimmer that had to keep swimming to maintain the scholarship even though her shoulder was done. Sports can mess up your major and affect your grades. Lastly sport will hinder your social life.
So before you sign on the bottom line be sure to understand what you are getting yourself into. I am not saying don’t play a sport, but rather just go in fully informed.
So parents I know sometimes we can make kid’s sports be almost life or death just know most likely your kid isn’t going to get that scholarship. In many sports you have to win the genetic lottery just so you can have a chance to play in college. Before you sign up for that travel team that practices 5 days a week for 2+ hours almost year round that is 45 mins from your house realize it might have an effect on your child’s grades and stats. I would much rather have a child on JV basketball with a 34 ACT rather than a varsity player with a 28 ACT.
The cost of college and the difficulty of admissions to the better colleges has to a large degree contributed to the rise of club and travel teams in many sports as well as the year round commitment. “College” costs a fortune and many many people do not qualify for aid who are not wealthy. Further there is essentially price fixing in tuition: meaning a school ranked at 150 is not substantially cheaper than number 6. So if you have to pay $65000 a year you want it to be the very best school you can get into. Further most college scholarships can be easily lost if you are cut from a team or are no longer a top contributor. FA is far more desirable. Sports for a great many is a means to an end. Few families I know with kids in time consuming sports view it as a path to a career in said sport, @Deesjca better GPA and test scores are not necessarily more valuable…
As the parents of a kid who was recruited and who plans to play her sport at the D1 level next year, I agree and disagree with some of the statements upstream.
I agree that the kid has to like the sport and that s/he should not be pursuing the sport exclusively for some potential advantage in college admissions or financing. Because, as I’ve told countless parents face-to-face, what happens if junior doesn’t get recruited or offered a slot or only garners interest at schools s/he wouldn’t be interested in otherwise? Will you consider all the work/time/money you spend on the sport a waste? Man, I would hope not.
But disagree that “I would much rather have a child on JV basketball with a 34 ACT rather than a varsity player with a 28 ACT.” Because you know what? Maybe your kid is NEVER going be a 34 ACT scorer…no matter how much prep you pay for. So if their ability with a ball or stick (or sword) can help that kid beat the terrible odds (even for 34 ACT-level applicants), what’s the issue?
I do agree that it’s important that parents know the odds (which are not good) of getting a scholarship or being offered a Likely Letter/LL equivalent. But I don’t see anything wrong with kids who have won the genetic lottery with casing in their ticket — if they want to.
Very tough to generalize as every family’s and every kid’s situation is different. Not to mention all the variability on the part of the colleges (maybe School X doesn’t need a LB that year) and the pool of talent that junior is competing with for his/her given year. Maybe it’s a deep class, maybe it’s not.
I want to respond as a former college athlete (albeit a long time ago) at a perennial Top 10 (at that time) program in swimming. There are a lot of myths surrounding top tier division 1 athletics that may be true at some but by no means at all.
First the time commitment. Yes there are time constraints and practice has a lot to do with it. That said the 20 hours (or more likely more) per week is akin to a hobby or passion everyone has. Practice time replaces video game time, or volunteer time, or knitting, or whatever a student does to relax. For most athletes practice is this downtime they have always had and continues to be.
Related to time, early practice. Yes 5am practice is rough, that said it was a huge benefit for me. I was always up, never slept through a class and could take all of my classes in the morning (when available). It was a huge benefit to have all classes done before lunch, giving me time to relax, study, etc. before afternoon practice.
Social Life. The team becomes your social life which again has huge benefits. I first realized this the day my parents dropped me off at school. I was sitting in an empty dorm room (my roommate hadn’t arrived yet) wonder “what now”. Suddenly there was a knock on the door and there were 3 upperclassmen teammates there rounding up the freshmen to take to a team social event. I had instant friends. I watched others on my floor struggle to get to know each other, figure out where/when to eat, find classes, etc. and had all of that accomplished within the first couple of hours. Granted the coaches would not allow us to be in a fraternity (hind sight this was an added bonus) so that part of social life was impacted. There were team parties (just as rowdy as any other party) and events, there was no lacking in social life. Later on I made friends in the dorm outside of the team and lived with them, off campus, my final 2 years. This gave me the best of both worlds. Add to that a letter jacket was like a magnet to many women on campus and my social life did not suffer at all.
Messing up major/grades. This can be a concern but from my experience while many sports straddle both semesters generally they are heavier in one or the other (swimming, wrestling, and basketball come to mind). Any coaches I have known would push an athlete to take classes that conflict with practice time in the lighter semester and would always work with the athlete to cover both. Travel can have an impact but again it comes down to time management. My wife had an exam the professor would not allow her to reschedule so the team bus waited outside the building for her to finish the exam, most coaches understand the student part of student athlete comes first and would delay the travel an hour in order to accommodate
I agree everyone should enter with eyes wide open but division 1 sports does not have to come at the sacrifice of social and academic pursuits. I do agree that the club programs today are selling parents a pie in the sky scholarship at age 10. I look back at my son’s experience and his soccer club waived that scholarship opportunity for years but once I started looking deeper into it I realized most of the club’s players were either walking on at a division 1 level or more likely going to one of several local non-prestigious division 3 schools. On the other hand his water polo club was honest from day 1 and stated that there are only 4 scholarships per team allowed by the NCAA and there are less than 40 programs in the NCAA. Couple this with almost all programs being on the West coast and they were honest, a scholarship isn’t going to happen…
The problem with the general topic of college athletes is that it is largely anecdotal. A good experience here offsets a negative experience there.
The issue of participating in athletics purely for scholarships is different in that it is subject to broader confirmation. There are more academic scholarships available overall than athletic scholarships. So, yes, if your kid is doing athletics just for a scholarship, you might get more bang for the buck hiring tutors instead spending the big bucks on elite club programs.
A dated NYT article addressing “doing it” for scholarships probably still holds true.
That said, I can think of a host of reasons other than scholarships for participating in sports during high school (health, commitment, leadership, friendships, to name a few). I rarely have much to add to the posts of @SevenDad, but I believe the conventional wisdom is that many kids do better academically when they have lots of ECs consuming their time (doesn’t have to be sports). I think we have all felt more efficient the more work we have to do (of course, to a point). So maybe the kid with a 28 ACT would not improve without the many outside demands placed on him or her.
My advice to all, is not to artificially inflate or deflate your expectations of what athletics can bring to your kid. Let your kid enjoy it for what it is. Have the conversation as to whether they want to commit to trying to continue their sport in college. There are no wrong answers, and the answers may change as the recruiting process advances.
There is also the benefit of just getting admitted to a college. Going through this with my student-athlete daughter looking at D3 schools, we see that many D3 LACs have lower admission standards for athletes. An off-the-cuff (but we’re finding to be true) remark from the head coach during a visit was that he could take anyone with a 29 ACT and 4-5 AP classes. This, compared to the university’s range of 31-34 ACT. The benefit to us that a coach can pull for your child and they can be a little lower in the academic range but still get preferential admissions. And I know at different colleges there are varying degrees of “pull” athletics has with admissions - that’s a topic for later.
She definitely won’t “go pro” in her sport, but she is being told by coaches that they can help pull her through admissons with grades and test scores that are below what the typical student will have. That’s a HUGE plus.
the solution is different for everyone: is it a scholarship because you dont qualify for FA? Ivies and D3 dont give athletic money so you are full pay. Top D1 may be a better bet for finances. Is it the ideal to be an excellent student and an excellent athlete? of course but that doesnt necessarily solve every problem
Do you really think any of what you’ve said is news to the parents reading this forum? Don’t we all pretty much know the score by the time we have athletes applying to college? My experience as a parent of three athletes with the potential to play in college is that I and my fellow gym/swim/baseball parents don’t need lectures about the futility of our child’s endeavors. Any parent of an 8 yo Level 4 gymnast who thinks Suzy is getting a full ride to Yale is going to learn better eventually, but she’s not on this forum. Even if she were, the generalities espoused above aren’t going to be what disabuses her of that notion. And for every parent who thinks Suzy is getting a full ride to Yale, there are a dozen who make the exact same decisions, try out for the exact same travel team or drive their swimmer to the same number of 5 AM practices, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with paying for college. Count me among the latter. The fact that my former gymnast is a rock star mathematician and credits much of her success to gymnastics, that my swimmer DID snag the elusive full ride, and that my baseball player lives/breathes/sleeps baseball is more than enough of a return on our investment. I am sure there are some delusional parents out there, but by the time your kid gets to a certain level, pretty much all of us know why we’re here and what the sport can do (or has done) for our kids.
I agree that the athlete should be playing at each level for what the athlete wants at that level, not necessarily for the next level. My daughter could have dropped at any time and I would have been fine with it.
Not playing would have changed her college choices, maybe for the better, maybe not. She had a lot of top D3 LACs recruiting her, but she wasn’t interested. She had dreams of top d1 programs for a while but realized they weren’t for her academically or athletically.
I know a lot more kids who used athletics to get into schools they wanted to go to than kids who were disappointed because there was no scholarship or team to play with. If people want more money, they need to drop down an athletic level or two or change divisions. A high school track star may get more money at a D2 school than at Oregon or Colorado. Might get more in merit money or need based aid at a D3.
Another very helpful thread, thank you OP and everyone who has given your thoughts and experience.
When my DS was younger, both swimming and school work and his other hobbies were all less demanding, once he started his “senior” level training in swimming, his coursework and other ECs also start to demand his attention and efforts, it can be a tough juggle sometimes, but we always make sure that his academics are the priority. Sports and music should be just icings on the cake.
The benefits we already see in continuing his swimming, in addition to the social, physical, and mental aspects, are really in acquiring great time management skills and forming good habits, which shall be with him way pass his student life.
Getting up at 4 am six-day a week, 11-month a year is not an easy thing, that kind of discipline alone is rather admirable, imho.
Well, I am glad most everyone on this forum has everything figured out when it comes to sports and what may lie ahead.
We can argue until the cows come home whether playing sports is a positive or a negative for a kid. The truth is it is both. What I was trying to help people and not just parents understand playing sports in college is very akin to having a job. One that you are paid very well. One that can help you in many ways with your college life. But you must realize and understand what you are signing up for. There are things you must do to get paid. It is great that you get to do your hobby as a job. Something you love to do. But just like any job if you don’t perform you will be fired. Nothing is guaranteed more than a year.
Here is what I do know from first hand experience. My D had to play two sports Junior year to get an exemption from gym class. She did this to take a 5th AP class. So she took AP Chem and AP Physics I. She was up past midnight most nights. I know because I am a night owl. It was a struggle. Her GPA suffered some. But she hit a 34 on the ACT in June with a 35 in Science. She doesn’t get that score without one of those classes. Plus she got 4s and 3s in all the AP classes.
I am glad she her sports abilities are limited so she didn’t also do club between those two sports. I don’t know if she would have made it. She has a friend coming up a year behind her. Just as smart and has D1 ability. It will be interesting to see how she handles junior year when for a large part of the year she will have a 3.75 hour door to door commute for practice. I doubt that she will opt for the 5th AP class. I am not trying to sound snarky, but there is a finite amount of time how we use it comes with consequences. In the end something has to give.
So your daughter used sports to get an advantage academically?
One big advantage my daughter had was that her athletic scholarship gave her enough money that she didn’t have to work during the school year. Yep, she was putting in an extra 10-15 hours at practice and conditioning, but she didn’t have to work in food services or in the library. If she put in 600 hours (20hr/wk x 30wks/yr) her scholarship would be paying her about $30/hr. Much more than my other daughter is getting tutoring history or teaching swimming to third graders.
We all seem to agree you shouldn’t do sports as a high school kid if the sole purpose is to get a scholarship. You should love the sport, value the physical, leadership, teamwork, and organizational benefits of being in the sport. And it should just plain be fun. It’s a bonus to get a scholarship or a hook to get into a school that might be a reach.
@gpo613 - This is where it’s just not possible to generalize with this stuff.
My kid has done what you are saying yours has done (and more!), and is still making the choice to swim 20+ hours a week year round. It’s what she is driven to do. Will that get her a scholarship? Probably not, but that’s not why we do this. It was never why we did this.
We all make choices and sacrifices, both the kids and the parents. Our choices and sacrifices are different than yours. In general, the advice on this section of the forum has been thoughtful and appropriate for our situation.
Your profile seems to indicate that you haven’t had many posts on CC. Stick around, do some reading through the archives and see if you think the people posting here are being led on unrealistically. I think not.
We are all well aware that sports come with a cost. Everything does. If the price is a fifth AP class or a 33 on the ACT instead of a 34, well–that’s a price I, for one, would be happy for my kids to pay.
I dont necessarily agree that “you shouldn’t do sports if the sole purpose is to get a scholarship.” Think about it: kids take multiple APs and not because they love doing it. There are countless of activities both academic and otherwise that kids do to enhance their chances of admissions, for merit aid and so on. Why not athletics? No one questions checking a box that declares you a minority or a legacy or other special bucket and that doesnt even take any extra work.
I am almost not sure of the point of the OP. As someone else wrote, these things are almost entirely specific to the kids. You are also washing over a lot of important details. For one, high stat kids are a dime a dozen. Sports can be a significant differentiator. For another thing, many employers really like athletes because of the myriad skills and attributes that playing sports help develop in a person. They can also be a great source of stress relief for a particular kid. I have a rower at a very competitive program; rowing is about as brutal as it gets. And yeah, while she acknowledges routinely how demanding it is, she also tells us that it’s a great source of respite for her. It is a sanctuary from her “other” life. She is a physics and astronomy double major, and at least where she goes to school, that can be a real grind, and she’s had more than a handful of stressful academic moments. And still, while you would think the last thing she needs after those experiences is to go out and engage in a grueling rowing workout, she’d tell you if she were writing this that getting out on the water, or just getting together with her crewmates, is Precisely what she needs.
And while two of my kids were high stats and strong test takers, one is not. I wouldn’t dismiss that 28 ACT kid; many of them go on to do great things, particularly those who have other skills.
All I ever was saying is you should understand what you are getting into and trying to present some information. I never said no kid should play sports.
I have to disagree with the generalization of “college sports is a job”. While I agree that for some it is, remember, the vast majority of college athletes are competing on the D3 level where by and large the emphasis is usually more academic than sport. It’s not anywhere close to “a job” at most of these schools. Many have significant study abroad populations on their teams, and kids doing all sorts of academic/school related things outside of their sport, etc. The athletes are able to participate on all levels of college life if they choose.
In fact, my D3 son just got his practice schedule for the coming year. While practices are “mandatory” and there is a significant time commitment (which, by the way, he’s already used to), the coach understands that the kids have academic responsibilities, too, and there is much flexibility in his practice schedule for that reason. Ultimately, he’s going to college to get a degree…not to swim…and his college reflects that mindset.
The commitment to sport is something most collegiate athletes are accustomed to - they wouldn’t get to that level without it. As for swimmers, if they’re swimming in college, far and away they already know that it’s a year long commitment because that’s what they’ve done for years. That’s no different for them. As others have said, the time management skills, leadership and commitment of the collegiate athlete are skills that are sought after by many potential employers.
I agree with @jmtabb - this is where finding the right program, the right level of competitiveness and the right academic fit is paramount - and that varies depending on the student-athlete.
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