I know G-town has had junior days in the past and they plan on having one this Spring for the girls. Has anyone had a son get an invite to the junior swim day?
I can’t answer your question directly but wanted to share our experience re: Georgetown recruiting.
Some background information, I have a daughter who went through the recruiting process last year and committed to a D1 school and signed her National Letter of Intent this past fall. She has two friends from her club team that also went through the process with Georgetown. One is a current member of the team and the other will be this fall.
From the beginning, the current member of the team told us that the head coach was “terrible regarding communication with recruits and that she couldn’t understand it”. In our experience that was in fact was true. My daughter was contacted by over 100 schools, she had an initial list of 14 schools that she communicated with and visited. She had lots of opportunity to communicate with many different schools and coaches. We found that the head coach was by far the worst at communicating of all the coaches and assistant coaches that she interacted with! The girls are all friends so they did compare notes on their Georgetown recruiting experiences. All three had very similar stories to tell.
Having said all that, my advice, if you and your son are interested in Georgetown is for you to contact them! You should e-mail and call both the head coach and the assistant coach. Leave a message but know that they can’t call you back until 7/1/16. Be persistent.
As an aside, the communication issues were the first clues for my daughter and I that Georgetown wasn’t going to work for her. After meeting with the coach and talking with team members we came to a few “conclusions”.
-Georgetown is a great school.
-The coach to us seemed unorganized.
-He wasn’t able to demonstrate more than normal progression in cutting times using his philosophy and training methods.
-It seemed to us that he was using both the Georgetown brand and the fact that he swam for and coached at Princeton to recruit new swimmers.
-The progression of the team has come from recruiting faster and faster classes each year, more so than getting any real improvement by the swimmers in the pool. That’s great for the coach and the recent recruits, but not for the swimmers who’ve been there awhile, who want to swim in meets and who want to get better.
We didn’t expect to feel that way and were surprised by our “conclusions”. At the time Georgetown was one of her top choices. My daughter just felt that if she was going to put in all that time and effort into swimming, on top of her MAIN reason for being there, getting a great education, that she wanted a coach who could and would work with her to get better.
This is all one family’s opinion and was given in the spirit of sharing and helpfulness. I hope everything works out for you and your son and I wish you all the best! The recruiting process is an interesting journey!
@farandsure, I second your team assessment methodology. Getting information on the coach is one of the hardest parts of the process. Like you, our daughter looked at the improvement rate of swimmers on the team similar to her times/ranking. Frankly, many D1 coaches get little improvement from their top women recruits (e.g. Auburn, UCLA), but are able to consistently recruit top athletes. Others show great improvement in limited areas (USC) or with a few superstars, or broad improvement overall (Louisville, NC State, Boise State) - but that’s very rare. Another key consideration is how many recruited swimmers have transferred or quit under that coach. (All available at collegeswimming.org) - Georgetown seems to do well by that measure.
Our daughter also felt that the organizational ability of the coach and his/her staff said a lot about the quality of the team. If the recruiting and official visit was well organized and executed, likely the training, academic arrangements and overall team would be similarly managed. We’ll see, she starts this summer!
I do note that Georgetown has a huge team. I don’t know if that means they have a lot of walk-ons, but it it unusual.
@Hastomen123 Good luck to your daughter! Exciting times ahead!
Thank you for this response, it was extremely helpful. My son has met or been in contact with several coaches (DI-DIII) and I have been interested on how each of these were handled. Some are very organized and it comes through clearly… Others have trouble responding to emails in a timely manner or completely ignore emails despite having an on-going communication for several months.
With specific regard to Georgetown, your commentary is consistent from every prospect we have spoken with.
@Dad1998, I’m glad it was helpful. Keep us posted on your son’s progress and if you have further questions, just ask.
My son went on an OV there last fall. He is not attending, however. If you have questions, send me a PM.
My son went to the junior day last year and we thought it was very well organized and informative. The team seemed very close as they walked with recruits for the entire tour and stayed for a Q and A afterwards
He too decided to apply elsewhere ED.Difficult to pass up nicer pool with similar academics
But as I said we thought the junior day was done well
good luck