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Memo to high school athletes everywhere: Do not believe the man or woman who tells you how great things will be if you come to play at State U. Choose a school because you like the school, not because you like the coach. Schools are institutions. They stand still. They dont relocate. Coaches? They lie and they leave. And unlike you, they dont have to take a year off when they decide to go to another school.
<p>when did we start guaranteeing little Johnny that everything in life will be perfect? To suggest that Lane or any coach is lying to recruits about their tenure is the lie. College coaches in ALL sports tell their recruits there are no guarantees. I’ve yet to see a high school recruit produce any evidence that a coach promised them that they would be there. Which would be a good trick because coaches are fired without notice on routine basis as well. This article is more of the latest american past time: “let’s get the successful guy”</p>
<p>aka let’s make up lies about him or her</p>
<p>the only lier here is the Boston Globe writer. And when he leave for the NYT’s will his readers yell lier…you left us you so and so…people need to grow up and realize it’s a free country and that they’re not entitled</p>
<p>Ridiculous. Of course you have to like the coach; it will be a major factor in your overall collegiate experience, particularly at the DI level.</p>
<p>I agree with at least one thing in this article… the NCAA violations should follow the coach if said violations had anything to do whatsoever with coaching/coaching staff violations and decisions.</p>
<p>Here is how it is done: the coach brings the Athletic Director in to tell the recruit how solid his job is. They trot out the useless contract extensions. Coach has a losing season and is fired. Job was safe, now it is gone. I agree with Modadun- the violation penalties should follow the coach.</p>
<p>of course the athlete should like the coach but what does that have to do with insuring that the coach will be there for the full 4 years. also remember that football players routinely transfer to get play time if they’re on the bench at their recruited school. And they too made declarations of loyalty during the recruitment process and they probably meant it. But things change, seasons are lost and coaches or players move on.</p>
<p>Those of you who champion the motto “Choose the school, not the coach” are either not serious athletes or the parents of serious athletes, or you / your son or daughter must have had a fabulous high school athletic experience with wonderful coaches. My D made her list of prospective schools based on academic fit and competitive level in her sport, but beyond that she will most definitely choose the coach and team dynamic which make her the most comfortable. After 11, soon to be 12, seasons of miserable coaching, she’d be a fool not to place the highest priority on who her college coach will be.</p>
<p>^^I agree with you. The problem is the transient nature of the coaches position - esp event coaches. In just the past year, 2 of the coaches my daughter had been in frequent contact with took positions at different schools.</p>
<p>Coaches can take a new position at any time, to be sure. But you can only make decisions based on the information you have; no one can predict the future. We did, however, try to make educated guesses when information was available to us. For example, one coach seemed so ambitious that we figured she’d be gone at the first sniff of a better offer. We also eliminated one school from consideration where the head coach was almost 65, since we could safely assume a new head coach would be taking over during D’s time there, and who knows what changes that might bring. Finally, we decided another coach was going to stick around at his job for a few more years because his D was attending the same university (free of charge, I would presume). At another university, the coach was only in his second year there, so we figured he’d probably stay put a while longer. But we could be wrong about any of these guesses.</p>
<p>The GFG: As the mother of a S who is a serious athlete and who did have a great experience in high school, I say “choose the school and not the coach” because regardless of what happens with the coach, one serious injury and a student no longer has a coach but most definitely still has a school.</p>
<p>It’s not an either/or choice. I believe both the school and the fit with the coach/team should be factors carefully considered. My S is an athlete at any Ivy. He had a terrific high school experience with a coach who had more influence on his development than any other adult at his high school. S is a 3 season athlete, so he worked with this coach every day at practice for 4 years - much more time than he spent with any teacher, guidance counselor, etc. When looking for colleges, his first criteria was academic fit. Of course, he needed to go somewhere he would be happy if his sport fell apart (injury, illness, dissatisfaction, etc.). But there were a number of schools that would be a good academic fit. Among that group, athletic fit with coach and team was carefully evaluated. He spends upwards of 25 hours/week, all 3 seasons with his team and coach. Having a bad fit would make for a pretty miserable experience.</p>
<p>^ Right. I think we all agree, but we’re just talking about different points in the recruiting timeline. Presumably the student uses academic fit as well as all the other relevant factors such as school location, social atmosphere, financial aid/scholarships offers, competitive level of team, etc. to narrow down the choices to the 5 or so schools where s/he is accepting offers of official visits. My feeling is that after that point, however, since all of them are schools that suit the student, the decision really boils down to the coach and team.</p>
<p>The GFG, is your daughter planning on becoming a professional athlete? The reason I ask is that my daughter has no plans after college to participate in athletics. Does that make her/her parents not serious? If so, then I guess your stance is correct. She’s going to be an athlete in college because it presents an entree into a great university where she will be able to develop herself for a future career in something standard like education, medicine, law, etc.</p>
<p>Beawinner, as of now D has no plans for a professional athletic career. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t looking for the best combination of athletics and academics she could find in a school. After all, as runners2 points out, she’ll be spending a heck of a lot of time with her college coaches and teammates, and she’d like the hours she dedicates to be an enjoyable and productive use of her time. In other words, the sport is more than an “entree into a great university” for her because she plans to actually pursue the sport with excellence for 4 entire years. To her it’s not a tool to gain admission and then who cares after that. Her choices were HYPSC, any of which would be just fine for preparing her for a great career. So given they’re all great schools she liked, why not use athletic fit as the distinguishing criterion among them? </p>
<p>As I said above, I think we basically agree. D first researched which schools met certain criteria she was looking for and made a long list of possibilities of pre-screened choices. Then she visited 12 out of 13 of them unofficially. (One was too far to be able to visit without first determining the interest level of the coaches, so she waited and just did the official there.) After those initial visits, she then selected 5 that she wished to accept official visits from. Those 5 were top colleges, so it’s not like the choice came down to Mediocre University with a top team versus the Elite University with a questionable team. They all were top schools with a good to a very good competitive level. So after the visits, yes, it did mostly come down to the team and coaches, since the other considerations were already taken into account.</p>
<p>3xboys: but if you don’t place a high priority on who the coach is, then what happens if your athlete stays healthy AND the obnoxious coach does stick around? The only way that isn’t a really bad situation too is if the athlete wouldn’t mind quitting the sport. I guess that’s what I mean by “serious”–not willing to enter with the mentality that if things aren’t what I’d like them to be with the team or coach, then I’ll just quit, problem solved. To me that’s like marrying a doubtfully suitable partner because you know you could always get divorced if the relationships sours.</p>
<p>I agree with most of the posters on this board, and echo exactly what Runners2 wrote. You have to pick it based on a school that you like and that will give you all the opportunities that you want academically, socially, etc. But at the same time, if you make the commitment to be a collegiate athlete, then it’s going to be a defining part of your experience (barring injury, burn-out, etc.) So find a school, a coach, a team, where you can have a balanced and enjoyable time, and where you’ll be happy with and without the sport. With so many amazing schools and programs out there, it shouldn’t be too tough.</p>
<p>I had an interesting twist to my recruiting experience apropos to this thread. A couple weeks ago, I got a call from my school’s coach and he told me that he was retiring after this season (buy-out plan). So even though he recruited me he’ll never coach me. Fortunately, even though I did really like the coach, I picked mostly for the team and the school, so I don’t feel betrayed or anything. It’s a little disappointing but I’m excited to learn who the new coach is and for the next 4 years…</p>
<p>I’m with GFG on this one, with one caveat. those who take the contrary view seem to believe (like many on CC) that there is some sort of magic concept of “fit.” In fact, in general the quality of one’s nonathletic experience at a school depends on so many variables that is impossible to predict at the time when the choice is made. Certainly, there are nonfits (a radical lesbian at BYU). But beyond that, its a crap shoot. By contrast, you can get a lot of useful info about a coach, who will be the single most important person in any serious athlete’s life. Might the coach leave? Sure. But as GFG said, you act on the best info that you have.</p>
<p>The caveat has to do with prestige. You can predict that a Harvard degree will be worth more than a flagship state U. degree. That should be factored into the equation.</p>
<p>Just yesterday i was speaking with a student athlete who got in EA to an amazing school and awaits hearing from 2 HYPS…what may cement the decision is the way the coach runs one of the programs…</p>
<p>and I spoke with another student-athlete who just made a similar decision between two LACS because of how the Coach ran the team…</p>
<p>^^ I’d add in the factor of “attitude” for lack of a better word. Some people will “like” just about anything because they see the world as a positive place, full of interesting people to get to know. Hard times are just something to move past, work through or get over. Other people can take a perfectly wonderful situation and create insurmountable problems. One of our family mantras is “Life is Attitude”. It doesn’t always work, but it helps. I’m often surprised when other parents tell me their kids are complaining about a teacher, a coach, a mean kid, or whatever. I check in with mine, and they just haven’t engaged in worrying about it- they’ve continued to function without wallowing. Every once in a while, one of them will come to me with a legitimate case for making a change, registering a complaint, etc., and we take care of it. But for the most part, we are pretty happy with our lot. </p>
<p>Maybe for this reason, I also don’t burden myself with helping them find a perfect college fit. I do believe in doing your best to find a GOOD fit, and then going forward to “bloom where you’re planted.”</p>