My son is intent on playing football in college while pursuing a degree in CS. From what I understand CS is a very difficult degree to pursue on it’s own let alone while playing football. How feasible is it for him to be able to do both IYO?
I just had lunch today with a CS engineering student who plays football in the Ivy. Both he and my son (mol bio/chem) were whining about how much easier the humanities guys on the team have it, and they certainly work hard. But they do manage to sneak in some Call of Duty time as well. I think like anything if your son attends a school that prioritized academics, and CS is important to him he can make it work.
@Ohiodad51 Thanks. Reassuring to say the least. Are the coaches somewhat accommodating realizing the difficulty of their majors?
Accommodating is a very elastic word, lol. There is some pressure not to miss or be late for meetings/lifts and the like because at the end of the day it is still D1 football. And don’t kid yourself or your son, handling a challenging major and competing in a sport which takes as much time as football is by no means easy. But at the end of the day one of the great things about the Ivy, NESCAC and other high academic D3 schools is that academics drives the bus, and no one is going to stop your son from picking his major or his classes.
The accommodations can take many forms. Because of a mix up caused by the school, my daughter had a hold put on her registration after her first semester and by the time they removed it, the section of the lab she needed was full. She called all upset about it. I told her to just sign up for the other lab that met right during practice. Well a miracle occurred within an hour of her telling her coach and a spot opened up in that other lab. Coincidence? I think not.
Her coach has done things like delay the time the bus leaves on a Friday morning so that students can take quizzes before leaving for the weekend, cutting practice short by an hour on Thursdays as many of the math classes have exams on Thursday nights; happens 2-3 times a semester, giving them the day off after returning from a travel game to make up class work missed. We played a team about 2 weeks ago and the athletic director had flown down a day late with a player who’d had a midterm on the day the team traveled.
They do make accommodations, but they are minor, not ‘you don’t have to practice because you have a hard major.’ I know one thing that is done at some big D1 schools is the students take a lighter load during the sports season, and the scholarship extends to cover summer.
Great info…thanks to you both. @Ohiodad51 he will be attending the Princeton and Dartmouth football camps this coming June… any words of advice from you or your son?
@moscott, I hope you enjoy this summer with your son. I had a blast touring around with the kid in the family truckster when he did his camps. Hope you enjoy it as well. As far as advice for your son, here you go:
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Go in in very good shape. The camps generally break down into two periods of a couple hours each (kinda like a two a day practice). One session will be mostly testing and the other will be evaluative under practice conditions. The sessions (especially the evaluative sessions) will run at college tempo which is much faster that high school tempo. I saw a lot of kids sucking wind during camp days which is not a good look.
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Be prepared for the level of competition to be well above high school practice. At the camps my son attended, maybe a quarter to a third of the kids in his position groups were legit D1 level players. Since the coaches will at times move guys around so that they are competing against players of roughly equivalent skill, there are no real “free” reps at camp days.
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Work his form. A lot. One of the easiest things to judge in a one day camp is if a particular kid has good technique.
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Pay attention. Know what you are supposed to do in each drill and compete hard in every one.
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Have fun. Let the coaches see that you enjoy the game and the competition.
Now advice for dad:
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If possible, do not schedule camp days back to back. When my son camped, we had at least one day between each camp day so he could recover.
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Make sure he is eating right and hydrating.
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Be prepared for some flat out crazy parents. One anecdote. I was at a camp day sitting next to a dad on the edge of the field watching pass pro drills. His kid, who was obviously not ready for the level of competition, was having a very bad day. Since the dad had spent the morning telling me how great his kid was, this came as something of a shock to the dad. He began chirping from the sidelines. Eventually the kid came over to him and the two of them got into a shouting match. Don’t be that guy.
Thank you again. We are doing the Princeton 1 day camp on a Friday. Sunday is long snapping at Dartmouth and Monday and Tuesday back to back QB camps at Dartmouth. I will definitely heed your advice.
D1 athletics and a challenging major will require some extra effort on your son’s part to find the right balance between the two.
My son is a D1 athlete and Engineering major. Working with his athletic academic adviser allows him to get early registration for his classes (most schools do this for athletes). He registers in the first wave, at the same time as seniors or honors students at his university. This allows him to fit his schedule around practice times as best as possible. This becomes more and more of a balance as you get into upper level classes which typically only have one section. So it will be important for your son to hold his ground on what he wants to major in and make sure the coach is supportive, some are not. He may need to miss practice one day a week for a particular semester.
By committing to take summer school EVERY year my son was able to have the Dean of the Science & Engineering College give him a waiver to take classes out of the normal sequence. Doing this allows him to take only 12 credits in his competition semester. He will also take 5 years to complete a 4 year program.
One Pac12 football player my son is still friends with from hs, gets signed up for both summer school sessions regardless of whether he wants to go to summer school or not. This allows the entire team to be on campus and train from June on. He only comes home for two weeks in May and is allowed to take no more than 9 credits in the fall. He meets NCAA progress to degree requirements by counting the 6 credits from summer school. As it is, this student has difficulty keeping up with a liberal arts major (and he was a solid student in hs). He switched his major to a “customized” one called General Studies because upper level science course are not offered in the summer and the travel schedule of the team means that he is typically off campus from Thurs. – late Sat/Sun. But this particular student willingly prioritized football over academics and has publicly said he will finish up a community college after his eligibility is done.