I would hypothesize that female athletes being recruited earlier has more to do with biology than Title IX . . . obviously, girls physically grow up faster than boys, and I think it’s just easier to project what a 16 year old girl will be like in college than a 16 year old boy. E.g. she will already be at her full height, where he could easily grow another several inches.
That said, I agree that early verbal commitments are far from binding on either party.
These early commitments we speak of are not legally binding agreements. They aren’t guarantees, they aren’t etched in stone. They are merely early announcements of a non binding recruiting agreement. People get all excited about the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries even though they aren’t the general election. This is like that, only more predictive. The awkward term some publications use is something like “committed to the process of application”. They are for the kids, they are for the club and HS coaches and they are mostly for the publications. They might even be for the college coaches because the earlier a team has recruits the better it is, right? Schools with lowest admission rate are often the most desired, right? Basically, these publications are a lot like College Confidential, haha! What these early commitments are is more akin to a gentleman’s agreement which, when one of the parties involved does not behave in a gentle(wo)manly manner, are occasionally prone to failure. But here’s the thing: the people involved in Ivy League and high level D1 lacrosse tend to behave in a remarkably gentle(wo)manly manner.
No laws/regulations are being broken here folks. The promises being made are contingent verbal agreements and yet all these idiotic kids and their brain damaged parents go along with them. How do they predict ACT/SAT score when they are dealing with sophomores? Well, it probably goes like this. In a non binding, non guaranteed and completely legal and NCAA and Title IX and Geneva Convention compliant way, coaches see a kid who’s a way better than average student at a school like Groton or Deerfield or Rye Country Day or Green and Nobles whose parents both graduated from Princeton and whose brother is on the Yale football team and they make an educated guess. Does that work for you, or is that still too uncertain? At my kids school the average ACT is 30. Take a kid who’s an above average student and you can be pretty sure ( though not guaranteed!) that they will have the goods.
Someone upstream mentioned that lacrosse is a regional, upper middle class sport. I agree. 25 kids on my kid’s team. The current parents have 14 undergrad ivy degrees and 19 ( MD, PhD, JD, MBA) graduate ivy degrees. I didn’t include MA, MS or MPH or there would be more. Of the 25 kids on the team, 12 have siblings who’ve played ivy sports. I don’t even know how many have sibs that merely go to Ivy League schools. Yet all of these cretins are thought to be breaking laws and stupidly taking part in this non binding, non guaranteed process.
Here’s another thing that’s going to blow your mind. In 6 years of being involved in recruiting ( 2 in HS and 4 in college) the only person my kid has heard the term AI from is me. Kid got 3 ivy offers --contingent, non binding, non guaranteed, verbal offers which we foolishly believed — and has been very involved in recruiting with coaches of current team and yet has never once heard the term AI. I’m sure the coaches are being Ivy League, NCAA and every other body of rules compliant ( because it’s lacrosse and who really cares so why cheat) but the only thing they say occasionally is that so and so’s skills aren’t great enough to make up for their academic record and the trouble it’s going to be to get them admitted.
I found CC several years ago while looking for information when my kids were going thru this process in ice hockey and lacrosse, and I found almost none. There is still nearly nothing on here about those sports. I never comment on football, track or swimming recruiting because I don’t know anything about it. I know about lacrosse and ice hockey and I presume they’re different than other sports just as I presume that rowing is different than basketball. But I’m probably just stupid that way. After all, I let my kid make a verbal agreement instead of playing one coach and team off the other until the last possible moment to be sure they had the greatest chance of a guaranteed likely letter. Oh wait, we couldn’t because lacrosse doesn’t work that way. I know.
@Ohiodad, they end up at Penn and Princeton, just like they said. Is it 100%? No, but it’s actually pretty accurate. I tracked it for a long time, and I mean really tracked it – boys and girls, when they committed, if they changed and followed them until their names were on the team roster. Like you, I found it hard to believe. No ivy league rules are being by-passed here, and obviously this has nothing to do with Title IX. The ivy league has has women’s sports in greater numbers for a longer time than any other conference by far.
@doubtful. I agree wholeheartedly with your post #41. I don’t think we are that far apart actually. I just don’t think the Ivy coaches are overtly breaking the rules just to be competitive in lax or soccer. But I think I get where you are going in your last couple posts. And if I do, then I don’t see much difference with what I am familiar with in football (and a bit of baseball and wrestling).
As an example, I mentioned on another thread a current senior at my kid’s high school who will probably end up in the Ivy next year. I met him when he was a freshman, and even at that point, he wanted to play in the Ivy League. Even then, you could see the kid was built right for his position at that level, and he is at the top of his class at a very good academic school. Add that to the fact that there is a well trod path from that high school in his sport to two Ivys in particular (my son was kind of abberational in that respect as he ended up at neither) and it wouldn’t take much to see the kid would end up at one of those two schools.
Lo and behold, senior year and it looks like he is headed to one. In footballl, it works like this. Say coach x was in the high school when my son was a junior to see him (hypothetically ;)). The other kid, then a sophomore, happens to be working out with my son. Coach talks to my son, and has some “incidental” contact with the sophomore to the effect of “first I am going to get this guy, then I will be back for you” or some such. The sophomore then goes to that school’s camp in the summer, and the coach says he likes the kid a lot and “can’t wait until they can get him on campus”. That kind of stuff happens fairly regularly in football, even in the Ivy. Is that kinda what we are talking about here? Nobody considers contact like that a commitable offer in the football world, even if frequently the kid ends up at that school. Maybe that is because guys get grey shirted or medicalled far more frequently in football, or at least it is far more publicized, I don’t know.
and FYI I believe the term the Ivy League wants kids to use with the press is “committed to the admissions process”. Of course, few media outlets report it that way, but by gosh, the Ivy will be different!
@twoinanddone, I know my kid told espnu and they confirmed with coaches and then maybe laxpower just picked it up. I don’t think espnu does the early commits thing anymore, but the college coach said it was OK to announce it. I don’t have my spread sheet anymore – it was just on a legal pad – but I just went over the last 7 years of lax commits ( non binding, non guaranteed, gentleman’s agreement kind of thing type commits) and for my kids school who’s team history I kinda know, laxpower is 63/73 which is 86%. Interestingly, I was able to confirm that the 10 kids who did not join the team all attended the university. One school for 7 years certainly does not rise to statistical significance, but I think most would view those numbers as reasonably informative. Additionally, the concept of statistical significance is kind of a weird metric to apply to this whole process because what statistics do show is that there’s no real advantage to our kids going to these schools or playing these sports. It’s not necessarily going to make them smarter, richer, healthier, happier or better looking than their equally hard working peers who go to State U. It’s just a fun thing they do. Maybe one of the football, baseball or basketball kids will go pro, but for most of our kids ivy league sports and even an ivy league education is merely a lark – like driving a nicer car to work. Don’t get me wrong, my kid has loved it, but at the end of the day I believe all of our intelligent, driven, hard working children would do well wherever they went.
I agree that I don’t believe (from my second-hand knowledge of what’s going on with girls Ivy lax recruiting) that they are overtly breaking the rules. However, the contact and discussions have definitely been more committal than what you set forth, Ohiodad51. These kids have been “told” they have a spot, unless their grades tank, etc. It would definitely make me nervous if I were one of those families, but I know these kids are not hustling to look at lots of other schools. They consider themselves committed. And at least in our area, end up where they say they committed to when they were sophomores.
I know this thread is descending into madness, but my only real point is if Ivy coaches are directly telling kids they will
unconditionally support them for a likely letter when the kid is a freshman or sophomore as I read the Ivy common agreement they are breaking the rules. If college coaches are posting commitments prior to signing an NLI, they are breaking NCAA rules. There is no carve out for women’s lacrosse. @Doubtfull is correct that I know nothing about lax. But I can read the rules and don’t see anywhere where it says “in all sports except lacrosse and women’s soccer”
@ohiodad, at least for us, my kid was mostly interested in 2 or 3 non ivy schools that are very good schools but not beholden to Ivy League academic standards and actually way better lacrosse programs than any place she got an offer from. She had been to their camps and tournaments, but coaches from all across the country work at these camps. The schools she liked flirted with her (thru a lot of emails her junior year when it was legal to contact a kid), but the head coaches weren’t on same page as their assistants and nothing solid was coming together which made us think she was probably a second tier recruit that they were stringing along in case they had an unexpected slot they needed to fill. Then in one week head coaches from 4 schools called her HS coach to inquire about her, where she was in recruiting and inviting her out for a visit – in January! HS coach told us they were going to offer a spot on the team. Got the offer ( contingent, non binding, non guaranteed offer) a day after the first visit and she took it. Turns out head coach of her school is BFFs with head coach of 2 of the other 3 schools. It’s all very collegial and clubby and I bet they talked about their recruits. Now sophs come to visit most every football weekend in the fall. The coaches tell the kids who they really want to land and why and who’s visiting out of courtesy to an alum or to a pushy parent who knows these visits are going on and wants kid to be a part of them. They’ve already scouted them during the summer, and they make educated guesses based on the info they do have about future grades and scores and further development based on parents, siblings, school attended. The players are de-briefed after the visit. It doesn’t always work. Every year at least one freshman quits the team before the spring season even starts and sometimes there’s more than one.
The following is from the insidelacrosse.com website:
http://www.insidelacrosse.com/article/2015-top-20-young-gun-junior-rankings/33031
There are no carve outs or exceptions for lacrosse or soccer. Everyone goes thru the same process of applying, pre-reads, admissions and Likely Letters. Lacrosse just makes offers to very well screened, high probability kids to participate in the application process. They let some kids know they will offer full support but admission is contingent on a host of non-athletic factors. They do this with about 6-8 kids each year. Their recruiting budget and the whole process is a small sliver of what football or basketball does. All of this info about these early “commits” is out there on the internet and in publications you can buy at Barnes and Noble and it’s been there for years. This isn’t some silk road secret. I’m incredulous that the Ivy League hasn’t sanctioned their lacrosse programs if they are so openly flouting the rules. Our AD has had kids on the teams recently. I think they know what’s going on and are OK with it. I’m not condoning any of this; I’m just trying to describe it.
For a bright athlete whose quality of play keeps them among the coach’s top recruits, there isn’t much to worry about. In most cases, everything should work out as planned for both the school and the recruit. A coach who would still recruit the same athlete in the fall of the senior year as they offered a spot to much earlier is expected to provide full support.
The concern that some people have with early commitments is that they are contingent on several things happening. I don’t believe that every coach considers these informal agreements as an obligation to support an athlete for better or worse and forsaking all other recruits. Bodies change and some athletes get relatively weaker and some get relatively better between their sophomore and senior years.
If your child was the number six of six recruits as a sophomore and she is now barely in the top 20, would every coach stand behind your daughter if it meant losing out on a top prospect that suddenly became available? Several of us have seen offers disappear for a variety of reasons. Most of the time things go fine, but that isn’t much of a consolation to the unfortunate few who are forced to scramble late in the process.
And for lacrosse they have to. The Ivy schools are competitive in lacrosse (M&W) but are competing for players with Maryland, Princeton, Virginia who are all filling their teams with sophomores. I’m sure the Ivy school are using all the right terms like ‘committed to the admissions process’ and the kids and their families hear “You’re going to Yale!” and that’s what they tell people and that’s what the lacrosse community thinks. BTW, I know girls on crew who also told everyone they were going to Yale as high school juniors, and they did go. As at any school, and even after siging the NLI, everything is contingent on being accepted, it’s just that it’s much harder to get accepted to an Ivy.
As doubtful said, most of these student athletes go to top high schools and are pretty wealthy. Many have taken SATs as 8th graders and know if they will be competitive academically at an Ivy. If they need to improve scores, they take prep classes and do what is necessary, but if they can’t get to Ivy levels, they go to Virginia or Maryland or Duke or Hopkins. Not a big downgrade. I know two who could never have gotten into Ivies, so as sophomores committed to Virginia. Both graduated on time, both not top students in any way, both employed within months of graduation, so college was very good experience. One played on the U19 national team too.
Like @doubtful, most of the kids I know attend the schools they committed to as sophomores. For girls, I only know one who didn’t, she was the top player in the state, All American, committed to U Florida (a high ranked D1 team), and before signing her NLI switched to Liberty. Obviously a family choice (her sister committed to Liberty too to play the next year). Every other girl I know went to the school she committed to. Boys have, in my experience, switched around a little more. One committed to Princeton but there was a coaching change and he immediately changed to Army (still as a sophomore in HS) and he does go there. When he was a sophomore, he definitely posted ‘Committed to Princeton’ on his social media pages.
Many players do not stick with the schools they originally start at. If you look at the rosters for teams, you’ll see the last school played at is another college. The best player (by far) on my daughter’s team is a transfer from a top D1 program who just wanted to move closer to home and was just one of many top players on her D1 team but is now a superstar on the D2 team. Lots of switching around at the mid D1 ranked schools for girls. I can name 5-6 kids who went to the school they committed to but didn’t play one minute in a game. Some stayed at the schools, others transferred.
The following is from the Ivy League Manual:
For an early commit to the Ivy League a careful reading of the rules indicate that the only proper response by a coach is that they are offering fully support to an athlete but that this support does not guarantee a Likely Letter or admission. Note that the following statements:
“Verbally committed to the admissions process at Princeton, Kyla Sears tops the 2017 class’s rankings”
And
“They let some kids know they will offer full support but admission is contingent on a host of non-athletic factors.”
appear to be consistent with the Ivy League rule. Also note that this rule forbids a promise of a Likely letter by a coach at any time. Thus a recruit that was offered a slot during their sophomore year and one that was offered a slot on Oct 31 of their senior year would be treated the same under this rule.
Except that in the case of the sophomore, the coach does not know: 1)the number of recruits he/she can support, 2) the AI numbers for that particular class or 3) that the kid is even recruitable (granted not a big issue for honors students from Choate).
“1) the number of recruits he/she can support,”
This is a number that the AD sets for each varsity sport. The total number of athletes for an Ivy League school is set by a formulation based on the number of varsity sports and the travel team size for each sport. For the most part this number is known well in advance and generally does not change much from year to year.
“2) the AI numbers for that particular class”
Again this is set by the AD and can be different for different sports. For many sports the AI number that a particular team is expected to make is the same as the average number for all recruited athletes. This is something that the AD and the team coach can work out and can be set s three years in advance (the average AI does not change that much year to year).
“3) that the kid is even recruitable”
This is a concern for all Ivy League athletes even those that do not commit early or do not apply ED/SCEA and are admitted during the regular admission cycle. All Ivy League athletes must make an AI minimum of 176. An early commit probably has taken the PSAT during their freshman and sophomore years and probably has taken the SAT or ACT during their sophomore year. Based on the percent national rank for these scores the coach can set a reasonable expectation for the SAT or ACT score ( using the percent national rank for junior and seniors) and if the athlete does not meet the minimum score then the athlete knows in advance that a Likely Letter/admission will not happen. In some cases the athlete will make a minimum ACT/SAT score during their sophomore year and can confidently make a verbal commitment without worrying about test scores (as with all athlete good grades will have to be maintained at current levels until graduation).
the point is, except in football, that number can change year to year. Remember where this started. The jumping off point was that recruiting classes were “completed” in sophomore year.
No, it is it set by the AD. It begins with the AI average of the preceding matriculating class. How an AD and coach can set that number three years in advance is unknown to me. During my son’s junior spring, no Ivy coach knew what the AI targets would be for the next class until shortly after May 1. Did they have a range? Sure. Everyone knew within two or three AI points where the various numbers would be. But again, you are not talking about projecting one class into the future, but two or three.
Yes, the AI floor applies to all atheletes.
I know of lacrosse player who committed to an Ivy in September of her sophomore year. This happened because her athletic ability and academic (strength of schedule, grades, and SAT scores) ability were little to no risk for the coach. In sports like lacrosse and soccer, most recruits are aware of the things necessary to be an early “commit” at an Ivy. The athletes who aren’t usually don’t in up there. Penn and Princeton have very competitive programs in women’s lacrosse. They have to recruit top players and good students without offering money. I think that most who choose this path do it for academic reasons! At least in lacrosse, these players are turning down offers from Duke, UVA, UNC etc to play there and often are playing full sticker price.
Since the Ivy League is not offering athletic scholarship money, the financial offer is not part of the recruiting conversation. With girls lacrosse especially, a sophomore can verbally commit to an Ivy League University with the promise of admissions support which would be clearly stated by the coach. Example, the coach reviews the most current transcript and can see where the student stands academically. If the student is a top recruit, the coach can suggest an ACT/SAT score that is attainable for admissions. This is more easily done if the recruits are presented to Admissions as a package using the academic index. A GPA booster legacy recruit who may never play may be asked to take the ACT/SAT several times to pull up the score for the recruits as a whole. A top recruit who is also a top student may be assigned to a lower number on the depth chart for support knowing they don’t need it. A strong player with lesser academic grades may be given a higher spot on the depth chart of support presented to admissions knowing they need the help. The pre-read from Admissions is basically a soft copy of the Likely Letter you would receive in Fall of Senior year that the coach would be given as early as sophomore year. Pending a drastic drop in grades or a arrest, you should be fine. You must maintain " academic integrity" but coaches will ask for the next years course selection and suggest what you should do. This is all done “hush” when you call them as none of it should be happening! With the non Ivies it is easier but basically the same except you already know how much money you are being given.
If you know this, and it is now plastered on a popular message board, I guess the hush strategy hasn’t worked so well, has it. Besides, there are about 200 slots per year offered per Ivy, making a total of about 1600 per year. Pretty broad conspiracy they have been cooking up!
I hope others chime in. In the meantime I still believe the following is true, and that there is not a depth chart of tiered support in Ivy recruiting:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/1786857-ivy-league-school-or-mit-p4.html
And a soft copy of a likely letter in sophomore year? If this is a draft, not addressed to anyone in particular, just so the recruit can see what a likely letter says, that’s no problem. But if “soft copy of a likely letter” means a likely letter addressed to the recruit and transmitted electronically (that’s what “soft” means) I’m not buying it.
EDIT: I see from some of your other posts that you have a son who is an athlete at Dartmouth. Maybe what you described is how they do it at Dartmouth. I don’t know (although before your post I never would have thought Dartmouth would do things like that) What is the basis of your information that other Ivies do this?