Could someone please explain how the clubs work? I mean, if I wanted to join club soccer… how would that differ from an intramural team? And from the varsity team? What about time commitment? Sports are really important to me, but I am not sure if I would want to play at the varsity level (seems too intense, but I don´t want it to be tooo relaxed, just like I think the intramurals are (maybe I am wrong?)
My son’s experience is in hockey. The club team is of a generally competitive nature, and they play other schools and attend a few tournaments. They are not a D1 team, but there are tryouts (although they try to let everyone in who has any place on the ice). I think it’s one practice a week, some semi-organized gym time, and usually one game on the weekend (unless it’s a tournament).
Intramural is very loose. In the first game, the other team (ie, another residential college’s team) didn’t even show up. Some of the kids can barely skate. It’s all about the fun.
D1, well, if it were for you, you’d know.
Thanks, @IxnayBob !
My D tried out for club volleyball after being one of the best in our town her whole high school career. She did not make it. She went on to play every intramural sport for her residential college (which she got props for in her college newsletter). She loves sports but like @IxnayBob said, the intramurals are a little more laid back though the competition for the Tyng Cup at the end of the year is fierce between the residential colleges and their is status to having it - sort of like the SuperBowl cup.
It was a great way for her to get exercise and to keep herself busy since she is used to doing something athletic all the time. Its also a great way for freshman to meet upper classmen.
My son played on Yale’s club baseball team for his freshman, sophomore and junior years and it’s been a great experience. The only downside, IMHO is that the team needs to rent multiple zip car’s to get to away games on the weekends in CT, MA and NH. (A lot of tired kids needing to drive home after double-headers makes me nervous.)
Like ixnaybob said, Varsity level soccer has a very high threshold of skill. There is club level men’s soccer: http://www.yale.edu/soccer/ Intramural soccer (men’s and coed) is very competitive. (Women’s IM soccer, in my day, wasn’t as competitive.) IMs don’t generally require much time commitment but about half the students partake so it’s very enjoyable and adds to the social dimension of Yale college life (adding cohesion within your residential college)
My son played club waterpolo and as a freshman he was a starter. They travel twice to Middlebury, VT, Brown, RI and Wesleyan. Good thing they had amazing charter buses transporting them and hotel accomodations so it wasn’t them driving themselves. When he visited bulldog days last year he got in the water with the team for a practice.
Thank you all for your answers, really helpful!!!
@123whatever, one other point to add to those above - if you have any interest in playing at the varsity level, you could contact the Yale coach in your sport and get a sense of whether you’re in the ballpark in terms of skill, and if so if it’s something you’re interested in pursuing.
In most sports only about 1-2% of high school varsity athletes end up playing varsity sports in NCAA Division 1, where Yale competes, but the best way to find out if it’s a possibility is to ask the coach.
Although Yale doesn’t have athletic scholarships per Ivy League rules, it does recruit student-athletes who fit what the school is looking for in terms of athletics, academics and other attributes.
Here’s an article from today’s Yale Daily News on athletic recruitment.
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/03/04/with-expansion-changes-to-recruitment-policy-unclear/
My son does play at a Varsity level at his universtiy (not Yale) but in general during our research, we found that club teams often include players who have the skills to play at a Varsity level but have chosen not to for various reasons. Of course not all of the players on a club team will be at that high a level, but we found the Club teams at every school he looked at to be very competitive.
@takeitallin - you are totally right. I have a friends whose daughter played travel vb her whole high school career and went to a small school on scholarship to play vb. The school was not up to her academic standards so she transferred to a much better school where she now plays club vb. It is very competitive and they go to other schools to compete.