<p>Is it good idea to try new sport or kkep the sport that you have been doing? My daughters school has rowing and Golf and she was thinking of joining</p>
<p>Depends on the year of your daughter - some schools require general PE for new students unless you are able to try out and get a JV or V spot on a team.</p>
<p>It will probably depend on what sports she is interested in, which have teams she can make, and what her new friends are doing. It can certainly change year to year (and often does).</p>
<p>It also depends on the sport. If it’s a sport that a lot of kids had access to/played as younger kids, then trying it for the first time in high school is not going to work well. Someone who’s never played soccer, for instance, isn’t likely to just be able to pick it up because all the other kids have been playing it since they were 4 or 5 – the skill differential is just too great. On the other hand, for sports that are less common, you’ll find other kids trying it for the first time too. Anyone can learn to row with just a small amount of instruction; anyone who plays tennis can pick up the basics of squash pretty easily, etc. Other sports that have a lot of kids trying it for the first time in high school would be track and field, football, wrestling, girls lacrosse.</p>
<p>Any idea how competitive it will be to make varsity team in a boarding school, for example soccer or basketball, as compared to in a regular-sized public school?</p>
<p>Golf I’d say would be harder to pick up than rowing…in terms of being able to make a team with zero previous experience.</p>
<p>I’ve known girls who started crew as 9th graders (having never known the sport existed) who later got D1 scholarships as rowers. There are usually lots of girls who start rowing in high school with no previous experience.</p>
<p>Golf will depend on the school, but any given boarding school is drawing heavily from a golf-playing population. I’ve never yet taught at a school with a girls’ golf team–twice I’ve seen a nominally co-ed team with only one or at most 2 very talented girls allowed to play.</p>
<p>As to your other question, it’s good to find the sports that make you happy and are fun and exciting to play. Starting a new school is often a great time to try out new sports. At my boarding school there is a certain amount of trying new things, or changing to new sports.</p>
<p>Depends on the school too–some have “third” or novice teams for kids new to the sport to try it out or play purely on the recreational level, even in ubercompetitive sports like hockey or basketball. And ditto Albion’s take on rowing–great sport to pick up for the first time in boarding school.</p>