Question about recruiting in women's rowing

Athletic Recruits
1

<p>So, my D is a junior, 2d year varsity rower with a competitive team and... we had honestly never considered rowing as a potential avenue to college when she started. It's just something she's fallen in love with and become obsessed with. That said, and even after much scouring of the internet, I'm honestly not sure where she stands with her recruitment prospects and I'm curious if anyone can point me in the right direction. </p>

<p>For rowing, she's a 5'6 and a half lightweight with a 7:35.0 2k and a 24.30.4 6k. She's hoping to drop at least 10 seconds off her 2k, but her team probably won't do their first 2k test of the year until February. She rows both port and starboard, is in her team's V8 and light 4, and will possibly be in the light 8 as well for spring. </p>

<p>She does well in school (3.8 unweighted GPA with mostly honors and AP classes), but I'm not sure if the fact she's with an online K12 school will mean her grades carry less weight than a traditional brick and mortar school. Her SAT pretest was an 1830, and she's studying in hopes of bringing it up to at least a 2000 when she takes it for real in 2 weeks. She's actually behind academically in math (only taking Alg II right now as a junior), but she didn't have any formal schooling from 3d to 9th grade, so I feel like she's doing exceptionally well academically, and it's all completely on her own initiative. </p>

<p>I've unschooled her and her sisters, and her older sister just did community college starting at 16 and is transferring to a UC as a junior now, so I'm... not at all familiar with 'moderin' college applications to begin with, and am utterly clueless and floundering trying to figure it out with the added layer of athletic recruiting. And holy cow was it a lot easier when I was applying 25 years ago.)</p>

<p>And, wow... sorry for that infodump, just wanted to make sure any relevant information's available, and here's my big question--she's been in contact, by phone and email, with a number of coaches from very good to truly amazing schools that she's very interested in, with both light and open weight programs, which seems encouraging, but I'm not sure if it's 'YAY' encouraging or, 'yeah, they talk to lots of kids, even ones they're not that serious about' encouraging. So... any idea if she's someone who has a reasonable expectation of being recruited to a good D1 school with a coach willing to go to bat for her? I'm not sure if I should be trying to encourage her to broaden her search to include good D2 and D3 schools as well, or if D1 is a realistic expectation. I just want to make sure she has the best college experience possible.</p>

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<p>I have no input re: her non-traditional schooling. In terms of rowing, however, she is a competitive candidate. You should take every coaches interest as a true interest, and engage in email conversation. As a Junior, there are no rules re: email exchange. Her erg scores are good, and in my experience, with the exception of Ivys, erg time can (often, but not always) trump gpa. California has a plethora of schools with rowing programs - from the top 3 (stanford/cal/ucla) to other solid programs (USD, UCSD, Loyola, etc). Good luck. PM me if you have any questions - 2 of my Ds are recruited rowers.</p>

3

<p>One more thing - open a berecruited.com profile. Pay the money for the deluxe package and track the coaches that track her. Communication is going to be your key.</p>

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<p>That is very good to hear, I’ve just been kind of floored by the whole thing–the rules and how to tell where you stand, and… pretty much everything about it. She found out about berecruited last summer and got a paid account there… and got a lot of emails on the first day the NCAA allowed. She’s sending regular updates to about 8 or 9 coaches, and engaging in regular email conversations with 4 of them. Has spoken to one on the phone and will be setting up a time with another after winter break is over. A few of them (the most interested, over all) are Ivies, and I’m concerned her SAT scores won’t be high enough for them, especially given she’ll have to take subject tests in sciences b/c her school offers no lab science. She really wants to go someplace on the East coast, and is mostly talking with schools with lightweight programs. </p>

<p>Thank you for your input, and I’ll definitely be PMing you!</p>

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<p>OOooor I would, but apparently I have to post 15 times before I can send a PM. :/</p>

6

<p>Stalkermama has a daughter who went to BU for the lightweight program. Her daughter is a freshman there now. I’m sure she’ll be happy to give you feedback too.</p>

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<p>Thanks, imafan. As soon as I manage to placate the forum gods with enough posts for PMs I’ll be messaging you both.</p>

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<p>Dear neverrun,</p>

<p>Welcome to the wonderful murky world of female college rowing recruitment.</p>

<p>My daughter was only really looking into D III programs, is not a lightweight and actually wound up at a college that has a club team (her love for the school and its very high “elite status” (for lack of a better term) trumped everything else so our situations are very different. However, I’ll add a couple of points.</p>

<p>BTW, I had to look up what “unschooled” means since I had never heard of the term before. And, like imafan, I don’t know how your daughter’s academic situation will affect recruiting. Just keep in mind that ERG scores are important to coaches, but your child still has to get admitted to whichever school she is interested in attending.</p>

<p>Yes, if your d is in contact with coaches, that is a good thing. Coaches are way too busy to waste their time with students who they are not interested in. That being said, there is a whole dance that goes on between college coaches and HS students and coaches have a way of speaking their own language. So, just be aware.</p>

<p>And, one other thing. Not that you explicitly said anything, but I got a small sense that part of your family’s plan involves possibly getting an athletic scholarship for your d. There are several threads here on CC that explain how scholarship money usually works in regard to Div I female rowing. To put it bluntly, I wouldn’t cash the check quite yet.</p>

<p>USRowing has some good info here: </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usrowing.org/DomesticRowing/YouthRowing/CollegeRecruitingInfo/CollegeRecruitingGuide.aspx[/url]”>http://www.usrowing.org/DomesticRowing/YouthRowing/CollegeRecruitingInfo/CollegeRecruitingGuide.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>And here is the advice almost all athlete parents and college advisors will agree on: choose to attend a college that your daughter would be happy attending even if they didn’t have rowing.</p>

<p>Crew is a great sport. Good luck!</p>

9

<p>Hi I am still here :slight_smile: Happy to help and YES! My daughter is a freshman LW rower at BU and she LOVES it! She just got back from Sculling winter break with the Southern California Scullers. If she sees this I am dead! PM’s are better.</p>

10

<p>I just went through all of this with my D, and she had very similar grades, SAT, and ERG scores as a junior. Funny, she fell in love with it as well, and signed early with a top D1 Rowing school. She is totally in the zone for D1 with lightweight programs, and her ERG is amazing for a lightweight!!! I am new as well here, so wont be able to PM you yet, but there are a ton of great resources online that will give you a step by step on how to get her noticed by the schools you target.</p>

11

<p>So RL got extra crazy last year and I pretty much fell off the map here, and while it’s only a little better now, I decided to check back in. @Recruiticus, thanks so much for your input, even though I didn’t see it until just now, and also for yours, @stalkermama. She actually ended up having to go open weight after a few girls on her team had… issues with their attempts at weight loss that led the coach to have all the lightweight and lightweight hopefuls professionally body fat tested. At 2 pounds shy of spring lightweight, the clinic declared her body fat levels too low to safely row lose any more weight. (She was carrying over 20 pounds more lean muscle mass than ‘average’ for her height and age.) It was a pretty big blow to her D1 hopes, given how short she is, and between that and not being a stellar academic prospect, it took her out of the running for quite a few programs, which was very discouraging at the time and had her worried about her chances of being recruited at all, let alone getting any scholarship money.</p>

<p>However, as encouragement to some of the smaller and maybe not as academically traditional or top rate kids out there? She signed with a good D1 school on the west coast, with a coaching staff she absolutely loves, and just received her official acceptance on Christmas Eve. Even as a 5’6" open weight she did, in fact, get an athletic scholarship, along with a pre-read from financial aid of an academic and need based package that makes it possible for her to attend. She also, actually, had a tentative offer from a very large, very competitive D1 (that involved no athletic aid, but hey, super ‘cheap’ public school with instate tuition and great need-based aid) that had gotten past admissions but fell apart b/c the online charter school she used for her first years of high school is a disaster. They had their courses declared ineligible by the NCAA starting with this current academic year, and subject to high scrutiny for last year. As she wasn’t a top level recruit their compliance officer wasn’t willing to jump through the hoops required to get her declared eligible, but that’s fine, given she didn’t really want to go to a massive college with 30 or 40,000 of her close personal friends, and the package she’s looking at with a smallish private college will probably get her out with slightly less debt than going to the larger university with no athletic aid would have. </p>

<p>So, yeah, long way of saying thank you to everyone who gave me information and encouragement last January and sharing a success story. It was confusing and frustrating but ultimately very worthwhile. She’s having a great senior season and is really looking forward to college next year. (And now my 15yo is heading down that track, but as a cox rather than a rower, and for men rather than women. So I guess we’ll see how that works out over the next couple years, though given how things go with coxes and men’s programs she’s pretty much just hoping for a leg up in admissions, not any money.)</p>