I would STRONGLY debate point #2 with you 8bagels. I won’t bore everyone with details, but the bios I read in the Ivy are full of all conference/all state first team selections, and nationally recognized players. There are players in the Ivy that turn down Power 5 athletic scholarship offers to play in the Ivy. I know that for 100% sure.
I don’t doubt that there are very high level athletes.
But they aren’t all that high.
I live in a highly competitive sports area, and this is of course a very small sample of athletes.
They are first/second team all conference level athletes, but not “all state” level.
I know a current baseball player, for example, going to an Ivy next year. He’s never been named to our “All City” team, is not in any conversation for all state or higher.
@fenwaypark - Thanks. Tennis does seem to be different. I doubt you’d find that in football or baseball or even golf.
Just some quick googling:
Penn had the #84 ranked baseball recruiting class last year, no other Ivy in the Top 100
http://www.perfectgame.org/rankings/Recruiting/Rankings.aspx
Didn’t find much on golf, but none of the top 50 players last year went to an Ivy.
http://golfweek.com/news/2014/nov/10/college-golf-recruiting-boys-2015-power-50/
I live in a pretty highly recruited area as well, at least in certain sports. I would agree that in the revenue sports the kids who end up in the Ivy are mid/low level D1 guys. In the non revenue sports with which I am familiar (wrestling and track&afield primarily) the difference between Ivy level and the top of D1 is a bit closer. My guess is this is because in the non headcount sports Ivy financial aid is comparable or better than the scholarship amounts available.
^ I think there’s a lot of truth to that - choosing between full ride for a headcount sport vs need-based Ivy aid. Also, it’s a numbers game. If you take the entire pool of D1 caliber football players, maybe 10% have the academic chops to be considered in the Ivies. That’s kind of like having to limit your recruiting to players with last names that start with the letter M. Sure, you’ll get the occasional star player that could play anywhere and chooses the Ivies, but I’d say the bulk are going to be very good all-around athletes that can be developed to work within a coach’s system - not necessarily the star running back that gets all the press in your hometown.
In track, it’s not unheard of for individual NCAA champions to be at Ivies, e.g men’s discus this year (Penn), women’s hammer last year (Princeton). I’m not saying any Ivies are comparable to a school like Oregon or LSU as an overall team, but there definitely are NCAA champs and Olympians in the mix in the Ivies. As an Olympic example, a men’s javelin thrower from Brown was in the Olympics recently.
Ice hockey is definitely a sport where the Ivies have some top talent, including alums in the NHL. Yale won the NCAA title a few years back and last time I checked rankings Harvard, Cornell and Yale were all top 20 in D1.
@8bagels - of course they aren’t all high D1 recruits. The Ivy is not the SEC, ACC, Pac 12, etc. No one is suggesting it is. But they certainly aren’t as you describe mostly “low to low-mid” either. Sure - a portion of a 33-35 man baseball roster might be. With over 300 D1 baseball programs, Penn’s #84 puts it somewhere in the top 25 - 30% for recruiting this year. Columbia came one win away of winning a Regional last year and beat national powerhouse Miami along the way (though Miami was the eventual regional winner). Nine baseball players got drafted by MLB last year out of the Ivy. This year’s top 100 ranked college baseball seniors includes an Ivy player. I’m sure I could go on for some time…
Yes, the average Ivy baseball roster talent is appreciably below a solid Power 5 conference roster. So are many of the rosters in the other 27 D1 conferences. Yes, the bottom portion of the Ivy may contain players like the one you happen to know that may not be good enough to be all city. I sincerely doubt that player was a recruited likely letter player, rather more likely one that was told he could have a shot at walking on if he could gain admission unsupported. Some of the Ivy schools just aren’t very good baseball schools. However, I still strongly disagree with your suggestion that the talent is mostly low to low mid across the Ivy.
So much of this also has to do with how badly the coach wants the athlete. My son, who had an ACT score of 30 and a 3.7 GPA, was recruited to an IVY and was just below that IA score but the coach really wanted him and ended up recruiting a student with a high AI score to get him. There are 3 older players on his team that were recruited in the same way.
Ivy baseball RPI rankings in 2015 NCAA Div 1 had Columbia at the top at 67, and Cornell at the bottom at 279. Out of 301 schools.
http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/baseball/d1/rpi
With Penn as the notable exception, Ivy rosters are usually 28-30/31, not the NCAA max of 35. And they can only travel with 24. So each player has a role. I do not know every player on every roster, but from what I have observed, each player is at least a Perfect Game (recruiting service) rating of 7/8 out of 10—which is a lot higher than all-city unless you are talking about LA or Miami or something like that.
And of course men’s rowing throws this discussion way off as the Ivys are powerhouses in that regard but it’s not a NCAA sport. Many very competitive male rowers pass up recruiting spots at W or Cal and choose an Ivy because they know they will still compete at the highest level, get an amazing education and possibly continue their rowing beyond graduation. It’s the whole package…
And I don’t think Cornell baseball will be in that position for long. They have a very competent new head coach in Pepecelli and I would expect him to aggressively get Cornell back in the Ivy hunt. I’d add one other thing about Penn this year - in addition the Freshmen that made their PG class rank an 84, there are two transfers, one who originally played at last year’s national Champion Virginia, the other who originally attended Houston, a top 25 team.
Just for fun I went and counted the rosters on each Ivy, as they are currently posted right now. Doesn’t mean they won’t change by opening day:
Yale - 27
Brown - 29
Princeton - 31
Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth - 32
Penn - 33
Harvard - 35
Well, I think it’s been shown (to me at least) that for Ivy, it depends on the sport.
Revenue sports, generally mid to low D1 level.
Tennis seems to get top players, no doubt.
Out of interest, I looked at some of the Ivy league golf scores. Oddly, while tennis seems to get high D1 level talent, golf - a similar “country club” sport, does not. I looked up the scores for Brown, Cornell and a few others. Lots of scores in the 80s and even 90s, with 2 day team scores 40, 50 strokes over par. These are not mid D1 level players. Surprising, esp. given the level of tennis players.
I think it very much depends on the sport, and some sports that are ‘prep school’ sports are going to continue to attract top students to the Ivy league who could have gone to other top D1 programs. Hockey, lacrosse, crew, tennis, golf. Princeton was tops in men’s lacrosse for many years, and still has a strong team. The players could definitely go to other D1 programs at Syracuse, Hopkins, DU. I know one who committed to Princeton and then changed his mind for Army. He definitely could have gone to many D1 programs, with both his skills and academics. I know many more like him.
There is a limited pool of students for any hockey program, so the Ivy League (which is after all a sports league) is in play for more students than it would be for track and field or basketball with hundreds of programs to pick from. Some who don’t have the creds for Ivy go to prep school for a year and cram for exams, with good tutoring, for a year. Holistically, a student with a year of Jr. Pro may look better to Ivy admissions than a 17 year old who is all numbers and no life experience.
Tennis can be played inside at Dartmouth, but golf cannot. It’s hard to attract a good golfer to Dartmouth when he’s only going to get to golf for 2-3 months of the school year when going to ASU or Miami is 12 months of golfing joy. One thing I took into account for my daughter when selecting a school is how much travel would be involved. Last year she had several weekends in a row that involved 10+ hour bus trips each way. The coach (who is from MA and just expected to travel a lot) realized this year that they didn’t have to do that, that other teams would come to us. This year she has one away weekend with games, and the rest are either at home or within a 3 hour drive. Ten home games out of 15, 3 games instate, one weekend away with 2 games (and they are flying).
I think another point to consider is that for some of these sports, like tennis, baseball and golf for example, a large portion of the truly elite talent is not going to college at all, but moving directly into the professional ranks.
At the end of the day, I think it is very hard for an Ivy to compete at the highest level in any sport given the way admissions is handled in the league.
I think it is hard for any school to compete at the highest level in any sport, not just the Ivies. But the Ivies do compete at the highest levels in some sports. Some of the following has been mentioned before:
-All eight Ivies ranked in the current top-25 men’s tennis recruiting rankings
-Yale, national hockey champs 2013
-Men’s hockey–currently three teams in the top 14 nationally
-Men’s lacrosse–five teams ranked in the NCAA top-20 for 2015
-Women’s fencing–three teams ranked in the top-10
-Rowing–CRCA poll in May 2015 had 4 Ivies in the top 20, including Brown at #1
-Men’s Water Polo–three teams in the NCAA top 12.
-Columbia baseball 2015–one game away from an NCAA Super Regional
I have surely missed some examples and others can chime in.
Also, I don’t think that some kids going straight to the pros from high school in tennis, baseball, or golf for example hurts the Ivies’ competitiveness. The Ivies are competitive top to bottom in tennis. Kids who are thinking about the pros out of high school in golf or baseball probably want to perfect their craft–be it pro or college–outside the cold Northeast, so if anything, I think that would hurt non-Ivy schools
I don’t disagree with any of that. My point is that whether the tippy top college age atheletes go to A ball, one of the satellite tours, the SEC or the ACC there is a general talent differential between the very top 18-19 year old athletes in most sports and the athletes in the Ivy.
Yup, all things considered, the Pac-12, SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big-12 (and maybe some others) are stronger athletically than the Ivies–primarily in revenue sports as compared to so-called “prep school” sports. Good point for anyone who was in doubt.
I hope all readers and posters can agree on that, right?