<p>Okay, I'm on CC a lot since D1 is a hs senior and oh how helpful CC has been the past couple years! She is not a school or team athlete, had other EC's that were time consuming but she was able to find and keep a job since 8th grade and do enough volunteering also. I think the job/volunteering was a strong point in her college apps.</p>
<p>Her younger sister is towards the end of 8th grade and is VERY much a scholar athlete, more 'perfectionist' and intense about grades and sports, and she is watching this college process.
Her sports have been crosscountry, rec/club soccer and track. She wants to start out HS with soccer and track. (nervous mom here praying for no injuries, HS soccer looks intense!)She will continue with club soccer also (hopefully, we are having $ challenges but family is helping)
She brought up a good point about how to work at a job or get enough volunteering when there's practice every day and games on weekends etc, and keeping tippytop grades. We are looking into reffing classes.</p>
<p>What has worked for your child/family with jobs and volunteering around sports schedules and homework?</p>
<p>no one on my daughters team worked or volunteered. And as you point out, I don’t see when they would have time.</p>
<p>for these recruited athletes it didn’t matter, her team members went Harvard (2), Princeton, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Brown, Yale and Penn…helluv a team:)</p>
<p>You volunteer where you can. son helped with sports with special needs children at his hs, both basketball and baseball, 1 hour a week, Joined best buddies club that met 1 day a week during lunch at his hs, that tied in with sports volunteering. some of the other boys volunteered after church with sunday school and another did special olympics, helped 1 day with regional competition and did a polar bear plunge. Still others went to the local elementary school and read to 1st graders for 30 minutes a week during the school day…</p>
<p>May not be necessary for the D1 level, but for the D3/Nescac level athlete… that could be what makes the difference, </p>
<p>Doesnt have to be over the top, just showing involvement…</p>
<p>My daughter is a recruited athlete and needed volunteer hours to graduate with a full diploma. She is a 3 sport athlete, and in a year round club sport. She does not work, but will graduate with over 200 hours of community service, despite a heavy training schedule and course load. It can be done, if service is a priority. Her volunteer hours are not as focused as the kids who have more time, but she has done a variety of things that are meaningful to her. She has done a lot of environmental work, beach clean up, grooming natural areas, etc. She has also done several 5ks to raise money for various causes and was a team leader for Relay for Life. She has also does tutoring during her lunch and free period at school. She was a youth mentor for a local kids triathlon series. This year, she did a Teens for Jeans drive for a local shelter and also The Blanket Project, where they made fleece blankets for kids removed from their homes by DCF. Because of her training/racing schedule, she missed a lot Saturday morning volunteer activities, but was able to do a lot of Saturday afternoon and Sunday events. </p>
<p>The point is, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities available, in every community. If it is something your daughter wants to do, she will be able to find things that fit her schedule. And I agree, it doesn’t have to be a crazy amount, just show involvement and awareness within the community. Can she be recruited without having volunteer hours, sure. Will she a better candidate for admissions with community service on her resume, absolutely.</p>
<p>My son is a swimmer and his coach has been helpful in trying to help his swimmers get some volunteer hours. Our coach has set up a program where the swimmers can teach swim lessons and have their earnings directly donated to a drowning prevention foundation. Since our coach schedules all the lessons, he can give the kids more or less hours depending on practice/meet schedule. It probably doesn’t add up to a lot of hours, but it’s something.</p>
<p>The refereeing is a great plan! Also, she could try to find some volunteer activities during the summer when she has more free time. My D was a three sport varsity athlete in high school, with all honors and AP classes. She really didn’t have time to do much more than that during the school year, especially since her sport was running and their big meets entailed some 7-10 hours or more every weekend. She was recruited to the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Georgetown, etc. If your D ends up being a top Div. 1 recruit, a sparse community involvement record won’t matter if she has the GPA, SAT’s and a high level of athletic performance.</p>
<p>My son is a 2 sport athlete and has caddied every summer since he was 13. He sort of stumbled upon this because he likes to golf and reallly it has worked very nicely with his sports schedule and demanding academic schedule. He gets to work pretty much when he has the time and the $ is fantastic. He has learned to manage his earnings very well; saves most of it and keeps out a chunk to use as his spending $ during the school year.
He has made some great adult contacts, has been forced to step outside of his ‘comfort’ zone a bit and has learned much in the way of how to treat/interact with people. The first year or 2 he caddied was a little brutal - getting up at the crack of dawn only to not get out. But, he stuck with it and I think this in and of itself says a lot about the type of person he is.
In terms of volunteering he is connected with 2 organizations ( 1 was a contact he made through caddying ) and one is something our family has been involved with. He regularly makes time especially in the 1 season he is not in his sport(s) but is just training.<br>
Lots of girls also caddy - give it some consideration - besides the benefits outlined above it is really nice not to be ever asked for spending $!</p>
<p>i don’t mean to say some of these athletes including my daughter didn’t help out, they just didn’t do it in ways that would be recorded as community service.</p>
<p>a far as work, none of them worked. 6 days a week of practice and full loads of AP’s etc with 4.0 goals, late at night and Sundays they studied. Not saying this is good btw, I think work as a teenager can make you a better person and student. but high school did not include work for my daughter or her teammates. and gfg is right, if you’re a top D1 recruit know one cares if you have community service, not even at hyps.</p>
<p>You have all been so helpful, and I’m looking forward to reading some more, and learning some more from this forum. She is a very motivated student/athlete who wants to do it all but there is only so much time and energy (and I keep reminding her your body needs some sleep too!), and sometimes it’s tough as we are in a rather rural area. Some really good ideas in here. She did sign up for the soccer referee classes in May. Thank You!</p>
<p>One student/athlete we know had (at age 12) started a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation that collected used winter clothing from families, hotels, and the resorts themselves in a ski resort town and distributed the collected clothing to various needy groups and individuals (homeless shelters, the Navajo Nation, etc.).</p>
<p>After a few years of doing this, he expanded his CS project to include his sport as well. He started a local benefit tournament and, in lieu of competitor entry fees and spectator admission fees, he just asked for donations of canned food and gently used winter clothing. The first tournament exceeded his expectations, drawing a surprising number of competitors including from “feuding” clubs, some of which had been boycotting each other’s tournaments. It seemed that the charity nature of this event provided a catalyst for people to put aside their differences and work/play together for a cause. Now an annual event (seven years and running), the tournament has collected probably five hundreds of items of winter clothing and over a thousand of pounds of food that have been distributed to people in need, charities, and food banks and the tournament has become one of the most anticipated and best attended events in our region.</p>
<p>Parent of a year round athlete here…
hundreds of hours logged between 8th grade and 12th…
though many done during the summers…full time, can be done a few weeks at a time if they do 40 hr weeks…
because this scholar-athlete’s sport requires both semesters and then nationals during summer.</p>
<p>Not unmanageable at all–however–you really need to have a calendar and plot out what they want to do and when so they dont miss opportunities…
and
–frankly they have to want to be doing it all…otherwise they will feel pushed/burned out.
Having the long term–solid community service (not just resume padding) beyond the APs and sport made our student a great recruit.
Could it have been done without service, yes
–however I think its about the journey of the teen becoming an adult and aware of the world beyond their home…and if its done with genuine compassion, that speaks volumes…</p>
<p>I’m a newbie here but I’d like to join in with another perspective. Our daughter too is in a year-round sport, 6 days a week + competitions most weekends now that spring is upon us (not too unusual of course for anyone on this forum!). Her school has a community service requirement of 30 hours a year which she fulfills (willingly, but not with overwhelming passion). What she does do is volunteer (passionately) at her club during the summers to teach her sport. And she’s in demand as a babysitter on weekend nights during the school year and on summer days. Ok, so that’s not going to bowl over any college adcom, but so what? She loves it, the kids like her, and she’s made and saved lots of $$ over the past few years. My point is, if your child’s an athlete with huge demands on his/her time, don’t sweat it: let him/her find the activity or activities (if any) they wish to pursue and let them fit it in as and how they may. Some are going to start incredible endeavors, some will babysit, some will find other outlets. It all comes out in the wash.</p>
<p>Colleges know that athletes don’t have time for additional extra-curricular activities during the school year if they do a year-round sport. However, we strongly believed that even, or perhaps especially, top athletes needed to take some time off to prevent burnout. That’s where volunteering or community service projects over the summer comes in. But try to find something that your kid is interested in, not something that looks good on a resume. If you can find volunteering that includes some kind of travel, it even counts as a vacation. While many of these volunteer projects are very expensive, there are a few that are low budget (e.g. working as a sports camp counselor or counselor-in-training, trail clean-up, international work-camps, etc.).</p>
<p>My D and her friend, both with year round sports commitments, organized a one week camp teaching their sport to kids in the neighborhood. This was held yearly the week before school started in August. As the organizers of the camp, the girls provided camp T-shirts, lunch and instructional time in the park. This was held every year and the campers and families looked forward to the kids spending time to beef up their sports skills and spend time with the neighborhood group. The older girls, major national level recruits, were thrilled to see their campers at the local high school games in the fall. Some of them were ball girls. The girls started this camp when they were in 6th grade and the younger campers were in 2nd and 3rd grades.</p>
<p>During my sons recruiting process not one coach asked about any work or community service… All they cared about was grades and performance and his character. He made a verbal early in his junior year and it was for a nice chunk of change. Was taking the AP/honors classes as well. And from our perspective his “job” was to work as hard as he could at his sport to come in ready to perform. We figure the money he is getting for college is somewhat like having a job. It just happens to be a job he loves.</p>
<p>My non-athlete son (genius boy) had very little community service beyond his required IB 30 hours, and some time on the city council as a youth rep, and some “get out the vote” stuff(less than 60 hours). He quit boy scouts when he learned how racist the scoutmaster was(long story), but he didn’t put that on his resume, and it’s hard to sum up in a few words. I feel it was a contributing factor to his many wait-lists, and no acceptances at his top schools.</p>
<p>His athlete bro had more school-based community service-“natural helper”, “Teen suicide prevention”, and “anti-bullying” groups, all that went well with his personality and status at our HS, plus the IB 30 hours, switched scout troops instead of quitting altogether, and so looked a bit more community-oriented. Did it matter? Don’t know, he went ED and got accepted.</p>
<p>If you have the talent, prolly doesn’t matter. Of course it helps a marginal case. it should be something that fits the kid’s interests, not just to “pad” the resume.</p>
<p>The key is balance - you can’t be all about any one thing.</p>
<p>The volunteering, a couple of hours after school, whole days in the summer, find a hospital or a school and work there around practice schedules in the summer. Everyone is usually understanding.</p>
<p>As for paying jobs, that’s usually only one year, maybe two, my daughter turned 16 in August before junior year so she got a job that following summer. </p>
<p>During the school year it’s work, sports, and a few clubs after school. I wouldn’t recommend not doing anything … that implies that the sport is the most important thing in life, outside of (possibly) school. But school is more than just classes.</p>
<p>Maybe it depends on the sport, but in my opinion it’s more important to be well-rounded … unless this is an economic necessity and the sport is the only way that the college tab is being paid.</p>