Ivy League Schools: Track & Field Recruitment

<p>I would start writing by writing to the respective track coaches and see if you can garner any interest. If they start writing back then your times are competitive.</p>

<p>Thank you all for the advice. After sending information about grades and statistics to several schools of interest, one Ivy League school wrote back right away asking if my son had any more events this year, and inviting him to attend their camp this summer. Is the question do you have more events, an indication that he’s not quite fast enough to be of interest yet? Is the invitation to the camp significant since they were responding to the statistics my son provided and should we try to attend if this school is one of his top choices? Thank you for considering and offering any perspective.</p>

<p>Coaches hit the big national meets during the summer. At New Balance Outdoor Nat’s (formerly Nike nats), I was sitting in the bleachers next to Stanford, Penn, Harvard and UVA - all of the coaches had their team hats and clipboards with kids names highlighted.
Even though track recruiting is driven by times, heights and distances, they still like to see a kid in person. So the coach was probably just inquiring if your son would be competing any more this year to see if he would have a chance to see him.
Ditto for the camp. </p>

<p>Contact rules prevent the coach from talking to you much at the meets, but if you go to see the coach on campus you can get some face time.</p>

<p>Ok Varska. We’ll try to get him to the camp, then. Since my son has sent info. to several schools, will any of them write back to say, sorry, we’re looking for faster times, or will they all write back something positive as a matter of course? Is there a particular kind of response to look for if they are not interested, somewhat interested, or very interested? Thank you again for sharing your expertise.</p>

<p>Junmom, I don’t think you’ll get any ‘thanks but no thanks’ replies. You may, however, find some coaches to be really disorganized and lax at getting back to him. In fairness they are dealing with hundreds of messages from prospective recruits. So stay in contact and don’t be shy about emailing a 2nd or 3rd time if a week or 2 passes with no reply. The coaches with real serious interest will be more clear over the next few months. Don’t be surprised if a coach that you assumed was not interested suddenly shows strong interest in the late summer or early fall (that sounds a little like a fortune cookie )</p>

<p>If you don’t get thanks but no thanks, then any communication could sound hopeful when it isn’t. For example, some of the messages coming back from Ivy League Schools in response to my son’s expression of interest range from congratulations on your academic success and your running, keep us posted with additional information. To congratulations, perhaps you can visit our camp this summer. They sound positive, but did not answer his question as to whether they think he fit a need they are trying to fill. We don’t want to read interest where there is none (based on reading many other threads on this site). We also don’t know what the next steps should be. One school several weeks ago after my son sent his stats said that over the next several weeks, they would send a lot of information about what it would be like to run for that team. Nothing ever came to follow-up what initially sounded like the coach was interested. Specifically for Ivy League track, what is the language in communications that indicate serious interest and when do they occur. </p>

<p>Also if anyone knows specific targets or recruitable times for any of the Ivy League schools for 400m and 200m, please share them.</p>

<p>Thank to all who are trying to help with this exciting, and somewhat confusing process.</p>

<p>I think most coaches are going to be sort of noncommittal this early in the summer. Can a 22.03 runner fill a need in the program? Sure, unless a 21.5 guy is available
Again, running at some big meets this summer would be great if he can swing it.<br>
Look at heps track to see this years outdoor results. You can get a sense of the depth of each program in his events.</p>

<p>Junmom- Having gone through recruiting for a class of 2013 athlete, I can share that most of the responses we got from coaches were vague and non-committal until the very end of the process (mid - Feb . of senior year).</p>

<p>We did actually get one response of “thanks - but no thanks” early in the fall of senior year from a coach who said he had a full roster for my son’s event and expected no openings based on current team and in-state talent. So we were very appreciative to know the situation, even though it was not the answer we had hoped for.</p>

<p>I can also confirm what Varska said – now that I know what they look like, I have seen several east coach coaches, including Ivy League ones, that travel to the big invitationals (JO Nationals & Arcadia, Chandler Rotary, etc. on the West coast ) with highlighted programs, stopwatches and checklists sitting in the stands taking notes. We were also told by coaches that they had “seen” my son, which somewhat creeped me out, because we never knew when that happened, but it obviously does and he never went to their university run or school specific track camp.</p>

<p>On-Track, many Ivies will have filled their track roster during the ED period and will have issued LLs to sew things up in October, expecting the ED/EASC application by Nov 1. Not all, but many.</p>

<p>Ivy coaches are sort of waiting for top athletes to decide where they want to go. They have no scholarships to offer and once you declare you are coming to the IL then they may get more serious about talking with you about specifics (after July 1). If you can rank order the IL schools based on what you know now, that can help you communicate clearly to coaches that you plan to be in the IL and the academic/athletic mix at their school puts them in the top couple of choices for you. If you don’t have the athletic stats to impress, this conversation won’t happen, of course!</p>

<p>Thanks for the replies. if a couple of IL Coaches wrote back to my S stating that they would like to meet him if he comes to their campuses this summer, do you think an unofficial visit greatly enhances his chances of getting an official visit in the fall? Please explain. Thank you!</p>

<p>Once you’ve made the initial academic and athletic cut, coaches are looking for more subjective factors like how well he might fit on the team, coachability, likeability, whether they have a connection to be able to work every day for four years together, so yes a summer visit can be great for moving closer to an official, unless your son has terrible personal skills and looks better on paper/film than in person.</p>

<p>^ exactly. One coach said, 'if it’s down to 2 guys who are very close in times, I’ll take the one that put in the time to come out here for a camp or unofficial.</p>

<p>And if you’re seriously considering the school, why wouldn’t you want to take a visit?</p>

<p>Of course we would like to visit all of these schools if high travel costs were not a factor, and in two instances, we have already visited (before my son realized running track for the school would be an option). I simply asked because if there is no recruiting advantage to meeting the coach in the unofficial visit, then my son may have the chance to take a good look at the school if/when it is determined that they are interested enough to offer official visits. Based on all of the helpful feedback we have received here, we are trying to arrange one or two camps and three unofficial visits. We haven’t quite figured out how to make it work to participate in further meets since we live a long way away from my son’s school. At camps, are the students given opportunities to be timed in their events to add to their records?</p>

<p>Junmom - I know, it’s difficult to decide how to allocate time and money for visits during the recruiting process. As for camps, I believe they will have opportunities to log some times in their events - nothing official, of course.</p>

<p>One bit of sage advice that is often given on this forum is to cast a wide net. Recruits that are strong athletically and academically have a lot of great opportunities not limited to the Ivy League.</p>

<p>How common is it that if your child is attending a camp and meeting coaches of the host school, or meeting the coaches during an unofficial visit, that they would ask him to come for an official visit in the fall? Or should we expect that even if they are interested, July or that setting would be too early to extend an invitation for an official visit or to express their level of interest? Thanks</p>

<p>A coach that’s really interested may say something like, ‘save one of your officials for us’ or ‘I’d like to bring you out in the fall to see what we have to offer’
So, yes, that conversation could happen during a summer visit</p>

<p>Coaches that play strictly by the rules cannot offer visits until July 1 but can certainly drop big hints. Often coaches have a specific weekend or two in mind because XC season means they have to be off campus for many weekends. If you can get a look at your own fall XC schedule and figure out which meets you could miss or dates where you could race in the morning on Saturday and then make it to campus later that day, this will help.</p>

<p>It can be very hard to predict which school will end up the favorite after official visits. It often happens that the original favorite doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. If you can go on officials to favorites early in the fall, that will leave room in case you need to add visits before the end of October if need be.</p>

<p>Just a word of warning–a college coach may or may not actually be present or have any coaching duties at the track camp held at his school. And if he is present, he may not be really thinking of the camp as a recruiting event, but rather a money-maker for his program. D attended a track camp at an Ivy, and come recruiting time the coach did not remember her at all despite his having been present. And it wasn’t because she wasn’t good enough, since at that point she was on the list as a candidate to represent the US in junior nationals. Also, she eventually took an OV at that very Ivy, but ended up signing with a better school athletically than his. In fact, none of the girls who attended camp with her ended up signing at that school, and at least one of them would now beat all his girls. So again, talent was not the reason camp attendance made no difference. It was simply a camp like any other camp for youth. For other sports (and maybe other Ivies), camps matter more to recruiting.</p>

<p>Very helpful. Does anyone know if this applies to the Princeton Track Camp? or anything about how to try to arrange to have time with the coach if you attend there? Or about Harvard or U Penn Camps?</p>

<p>Sent you a PM.</p>