<p>I've been playing hockey on high level club teams since i was little. After 3 years of playing varsity, and two years of being leading scorer, I was not selected by the coach to be a captain for this upcoming year, even though I was by far the most qualified(I'm the only high level player on the team, others just lack the knowledge and skill). Although I'm very angry about the situation, theres nothing I can do to change it now. Hockey one of my few ECs as I play both club(juniors) and varsity and it takes up all of my free time. I feel that my application is far weaker now that I have learned I will not have a leadership role in the sport that I have committed all of my time to. </p>
<p>Note: the varsity level is far inferior to that of junior hockey. </p>
<p>PS, please don't respond with "maybe you should work harder". i just want to gauge how important the C is for colleges.</p>
<p>Can you lead by example? How you respond to setbacks can help your application.
Are you hoping to play college hockey? In some sports, club team recruiting is more significant than is the high school team.
Can your club coach write a letter of recommendation?</p>
<p>The best players don’t make the best leaders…It’s just a letter man, you can lead with or without it. It won’t matter that much in the end as it is.</p>
<p>Colleges know that being captain is often much more about team politics and coach egos than real leadership. It’s of limited worth, your ability is much more important. I personally know of a situation where the coach runs fake elections, then picks who he wants as captains, claiming it was the team who picked the captains. It’s all rigged in that situation.</p>
<p>Like soccer and baseball, the club circuit is much more important than the HS one anyway.</p>
<p>This is going to sound harsher than I mean it, perhaps, but here goes. You state:" I feel that my application is far weaker now". Did the coach have a sense that you wanted to be captain in order to improve your chances at a college acceptance? As SvFalcons posted earlier, captains aren’t always the best players, but someone who can inspire the rest of the team - captains have to be part of the team, not just the one leading the team.</p>
<p>Many, many people get accepted to colleges without ever having been a team captain or a club president. Your commitment to one project (playing hockey) speaks for itself. Many college admissions people view depth of activities more positively than breadth of activities.</p>
<p>Not getting captain is very disappointing for sure, but just know it will not make a huge difference for admissions.Your level of commitment will impress them, so try to quantify it on your application somehow.
I did also want to encourage you to try to write down some thoughts about your range of raw emotions on this, and take at least a couple weeks to reflect and see if there is anything positive you can draw from it. The reason I suggest this is because this very experience is the kind of thing often suggested as an essay prompt for scholarships, applications, etc.
I would urge you to think about any kind of lessons you could draw from this too. A previous poster noted that captain selections are often political. True. So are many things in life like college admissions and job promotions. Maybe this has given you some preparation for the future, or maybe made you even more determined to make your impact noticed.
I would also gently encourage you to really reflect too, thinking from a coach’s perspective, of why the captain choice was made. Sometime is is politics, but my observation as a parent of varsity athletes has been that coaches (if fair/objective) name captains with consideration to 3 valid factors: personal playing impact, personal work ethic, and/or promoting team spirit and motivating teammates. Are there any insights you could draw from that?<br>
I will say over the years I have seen a handful of players who were outstanding players (who went on to play in college), but their interactions with teammates on the field kept them from being captain. Being quick to place blame on others instead of encouraging teammates to stay focused, habitually not passing to a teammate who is in a clear position to score, not mentoring other players to share skills, not communicating to teammates during a game, etc., are all things that a coach may factor into the decision.
You may also want to privately talk to your coach if you feel that would be appropriate, and from the perspective of “what could I be doing the to help the team more?” Based on how that conversation goes, you may want to then ask her if she could tell you why she didn’t select you. It could maybe be as simple as she knows how thin you are spread with playing varsity and club. Maybe she felt like it would be a burden you didn’t need.
I do feel like it would be good of you to ask, even after the season ends, if you are still concerned about it.
Be assured you will still get into a great college and you will do just fine, and believe it or not, you may even look back on this experience with different emotions in a few weeks’ time. </p>
You’re probably not going to like this, but I think that you’re setting yourself up for a fall here and that there’s a lot here you can use to learn & grow if you are only willing.</snip></p>
<p>Put yourself in the coach’s shoes if you can. He’s got a modestly skilled team and one kid that really has the goods. In the best of worlds that kid helps raise the level of the others, selflessly helping the team improve. I’m betting we don’t live in that best of worlds ;-)</p>
<p>I suspect, instead, that by actions and words you let those other kids know they can’t hold a candle to you, they’d be riding the bench if not cut completely from your juniors team, and as for the coach – well, nothing that joker can teach you and I’ll bet you’ve made sure he knows it with a few eye rolls and sighs whenever he asks you to do something.</p>
<p>In other words not making captain is a wake-up call to you that talented as you might be, talent is only one part of what it takes to succeed in this world and that you’re falling way short on the remainder. You can learn from this lesson at 17 at let life teach it to you over and over until it sinks in.</p>
<p>As for team captain, that is not a can’t-miss EC anyway and your estimation that “I feel that my application is far weaker now” is way short of the mark. Captain was not going to be a huge boost; for the schools that care about ECs a lot it isn’t just that big a deal, and for schools that don’t care that much about ECs having it or not having it doesn’t really matter. </p>