My daughter plays D2 lacrosse - she is a freshman. A couple of her fellow recruits just seem on a path to not cutting it. 3 of them didn’t do their NCAA paperwork and couldn’t even get on the bus to the first scrimmage, 1 of them hasn’t been doing her mandatory study hours, and is perpetually late to practices (this has cause a 5 am 6 mile run for the entire team 3 times thus far this year) - the kid isn’t making friends of her teammates like that! Then my daughter told me that one of the same girls was seen vaping by the coach in her college LAX clothing – apparently the coach was pretty pissed.
Daughter was surprised as she worked hard to get there and is not taking dumb chances by being late or missing study hours! Is this fairly common that a few kids just are not cut out for it?
@katliamom, actually the fall off isn’t typical at the better schools as student athletes twin those with instances relish managing both focuses and are given lots of peer and faculty support.
Hmmm… I come from a family with quite a few D1 and D2 college athletes, including at Ivies. All reported people “falling off” for all kinds of reasons, peer and faculty support notwithstanding.
At a certain type of school, recruited athletes must meet certain criteria set by admissions. I would venture that few of them see a lot of students hit the wall for "excessive irresponsibility ". But as noted above, there are a lot of reasons for an athlete to quit, ranging from injury, needing more time for academics, to simply being eclipsed by better players and not getting playing time. Few kids are going to go pro in their sports, so evaluating whether it’s worth the time and energy is probably the smart thing to do. D3 sports tend to fit in with student life a little better than big D1 sports.
@toomanyteens , will your D’s teammates lose their scholarships?
I think it is common for kids to drop off over time, at least that was my experience back in the day and what I have observed lately following my son and his buddies and my daughter’s friends. Completely anecdotally, it seems that more girls drop off than guys, but I have no idea if that is true or if there are actually stats kept on that. What is maybe not so common is such a large percentage of a current recruiting class having issues. That would give me pause about the program honestly.
If the coach is serious about the rules, she’ll suspend one or two and that will let the team know the lay of the land. our coach did it for two of the starters on the first game. I’m not sure what the penalty is for being late or not doing study hours, but there is one and the coach enforces it. My daughter’s coach gets their grades and whether they miss class. They have to go to study tables until they ‘make grades’ (I think it is a 3.0 but not sure) and there are some seniors who still must go to study tables.
The NCAA paperwork is not always their fault. My daughter’s wasn’t done until she’d started school because not all 3 of the high schools she went to sent original transcripts (and the woman at the NCAA asked me ‘do you know how much mail we get?’ when I called to find the missing paperwork), and because she was under 18 I had to sign things before she could be drug tested. It happens.
Things have a way of working themselves out. Those who take it seriously and follow the rules will be the ones on the field. There will always be kids who cause the team to run laps or gassers because they are late or goof off at practice. It is likely the captains are having a talk with the offenders.
And I’ll add that this may be bothering your daughter a lot more than it is bothering the coach. My daughter was bothered by it all, to the point she’d call me and rant and rave because it was all so unfair and there was no one else she could talk to about it. She’d do this after a game too (I’d watch the live stream). Could I believe Susie’s pass was so BAD, or that Betty got ANOTHER yellow card (really, I can’t believe how many some kids get and the coach doesn’t pull them), or that no one can catch a pass! The inhumanity of it all!
I bet your daughter is complaining to you but not to her teammates or coach.
@gardenstategal I don’t really know – daughter doesn’t know the specifics of her teammates arrangements with the team, she just sees that they don’t seem to be making it
@twoinanddone I am not sure she is all that bothered by it but kind of surprised. She is happy to be there, have her spot, be part of the team and just cannot fathom not taking her responsibilities seriously. She did say at least one of them is on the verge of being suspended.
My son and I went to a D3 college sport prospect camp one day this summer. He had reached out to the coach and he was invited to come. The coach gave everyone a lecture after the camp was done.
He said that he recruits 9-11 kids each year for his team. He said that of those kids, probably 1/2 of them will play all 4 years. He said he loses a kid or 2 after every freshman year because the kid doesn’t play enough and not worth their time. He usually cuts another kid or 2 if they didn’t meet his expectations after the 1st year and didn’t see them playing there long term. He said he usually has a couple of kids quit junior year so the kids can do co-ops or study overseas. He also said he loses a kid or 2 every year to injury and they just give up playing.
The coach said from day one he is starting to recruit your kids replacement, and hopes to find someone bigger faster stronger etc.
That really put it into perspective for my son. He also runs track and there is not a lot of coaching BS involved in track, either your fast or not.
@RightCoaster D was surprised when she saw how many freshman coach recruited – I assured her then (before school even started) that coach knows they won’t all make it/stay and recruits accordingly. Now she is seeing that.
Seven of the nine freshmen my daughter started with are still playing (seniors now). The following classes were smaller (6, 5) and have lost one or two each year, usually because they transfer but one dropped this year because an injury (from a car accident) was causing trouble.
They come, they go. When 9 leave in the same year (U of Louisville), that’s trouble.
If you look at any team’s roster, there are almost always fewer seniors (often, many fewer seniors) than freshmen. Several of the athletes I know (or know of) who have left before senior year did so because of injuries. I was at an SEC gymnastics meet years ago that happened to be gymnastics alumni night, and they introduced all of the alumni in attendance, reading off the years they competed. It was shocking how many only competed for one or two years. My assumption with gymnastics was that most of the attrition was due to injury.
While my daughter has been going through the recruiting process for swim, one of our data points started out being athlete retention, using seniors versus freshmen as a proxy. We ended up discarding that as a data point because it was kind of depressing and, we decided, not fair, when we don’t know the stories behind the numbers. But yes, I think it is common that athletes start washing out or implementing an exit strategy as soon as they hit campus.
I agree, @planit. I was a recruited athlete at a mid-major Div 1 30 yrs. ago (yikes…). Told my coach after my soph. year that I would be retiring - studying abroad my junior year, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to come back the same for my senior year with a year off. I received academic money, not scholarship - looking back, so glad for that. It was time to move on and have other experiences. Plus, for me as a language major, studying abroad was paramount to my studies. If you had asked me as a freshman if I was going to compete all 4 years, the answer would’ve been hell yes. Life changed…and so did my priorities…sometimes life just happens.
^^ me too but d3. Program was being built and each year, the newly recruited class was simply better. Only 1 senior, very much a standout, was still competing senior year. None of the rest of us were all that competitive, even tough we’d improved, when compared to the younger teammates.