Was your child always a stand out in their sport? When did you know they were good enough to compete at the D1 level?
I’m asking because Kiddo #3 is a two sport athlete - one she loves to play (but will never reach an elite level at), and another that she is naturally gifted at, but doesn’t really work at. She doesn’t even talk much about the other sport. Ran into her coach at a school event last night and he mentioned to us that she’s “being watched.” DH and I talked last night and I think it’s starting to dawn on us - and Kiddo and her coach - that if she’s this good with just showing up for one season (vs training for the sport and/or joining a club team to get better coaching) she may have actual potential. But I have no idea if it’s elite college level potential.
Yes, my son was always a stand out in his sport. But I don’t think any of us thought about him playing beyond high school. Sophomore year was the turning point and it helped he played for a great coach, on a great team with a lot of talent so he had friends who went through the whole recruiting thing ahead of him and we had a lot of help navigating this process with him. It’s a commitment and college athletics ( especially D1 ) is so completely different than playing high school sports - even high level high school sports. The student has to want to do it. Not the parents!
We were all so laid back about things that the process just sort of happened. My son is a very good student so really, we were all just focused on the student part of the equation. We have a younger child also with D1 potential ( different sport ), has been approached, but all of us are kind of on board not to pursue things. We’ve learned a lot from my son’s experience.
Mine played through middle school but we weren’t very organized (different teams, couldn’t do expensive travel teams) and then we moved 3 times in high school. Final school her coach changed for the last year. She didn’t decide she wanted to play in college until very late in junior year, so we basically had the summer to figure it out and find a place. She had friends from middle school club teams who did do the expensive club route and were considered the ‘stars’ and committed to top D1 teams as sophomore in high school.
Daughter was/is good at her sport, but smaller than most at the D1 level. She was recruited by a few schools at the D1 level but we didn’t think the academic fit was good, so she looked at D2 and D3 also. Decided on D2 and it has been a good balance.
There is a big range in D1 level in almost every sport. Harvard and Yale are good in some sports, not so much in others. There is U of Texas in D1 and tiny Presbyterian and Winthrop in SC. Very different college experiences.
I think it is generally true that if you know what you are looking for kids with the potential to play at the D1 level can be identified relatively early, certainly by the beginning of high school. You will see pretty big differences in things like balance, coordination, flexibility and being light on one’s feet while still playing with explosion and power as kids begin to actually play the game rather than just running around and having fun. These traits, in my opinion, are athletic traits rather than sport specific ones, and a kid who is a really fluid and graceful wide receiver in junior high or freshman ball may turn out to be a D1 level outfielder of small forward when all is said and done.
The problem is that the subset of kids who show early potential to play at that level is quite a bit larger than the number of kids who actually do. This is because any type of early evaluation depends on a reasonable improvement slope. Some of this is physical. Some kids just stop growing, don’t get any faster or more coordinated, whatever. I played with a kid like that in high school. When we were in junior high and as freshmen he was a flat out stud. Big, ran like a deer, good balance, the whole deal. But he just never got faster or stronger,and eventually a lot of other guys passed him up. It happens. Another set of kids don’t have the interest to make the sacrifices necessary to feed their talent. No matter how talented a kid appears, outside of a very few true physical freaks playing any sport at a high level requires an immense amount of work. You have to love it, at least a little bit, to do that work. For that reason, I would try and balance your perception of your daughter’s affinity for a particular sport with an understanding of her feelings about what she is willing to put in to it.
My perspective is that mentality plays as big a role as physical skills. Does your child watch the sport in their spare time? Are they reading articles about it? Do they actively seek out opportunities to play?
The above, plus being a starter/top player for a few years in a row (see above from Ohiodad51) are good signs that they can play in college. Which division is very dependent on the sport and the player.
There are also obvious developmental moments that jump a kid up to the next level. So, depending on the sport or position, the day your kid finally gets to be as tall as dad or fills out like his uncles might be the time to reexamine what’s possible. Best can come later if the size wasn’t there until 15 years old, especially in the sports where raw physicality makes a bigger difference (FB, hoops, VB, etc).
Our daughter is a D1 track athlete. She was always the fastest on her team, but it wasn’t until she started competing on a regional level that we all began to realize there may be more to it than that. When she asked to train year round (even during volleyball season in high school), we knew she was serious. Sophomore and junior year she placed high at our state meet and recruiting started in full force summer between junior and senior year.
Thanks for the responses. I feel like Kiddo is really at a crossroads right now and is going to have to decide whether she wants to actually work on this sport. She joined just to be with friends and without serious intent last year and is taking it much more seriously this year, but we’ll just have to wait and see whether she gets really serious about it.
As noted above, there is a wide range in D1 depending on the sport, but what I found to be a consistent measure with both of my D1 athletes is how they fared at the regional and national level (and even then at what age are they making it to these events). That will help dictate where you fall within that range or if you belong there at all.
No matter the division, the kid has to want it. It’s too difficult and rarely works out otherwise. Good luck to your daughter, when it’s a right fit, it’s a fantastic journey!
There are also some kids who just have a sports mindset, can see the field, know the rules, know where all the players should be and what’s legal and what isn’t. My brother was one of those. In high school he played all the special teams plays because he knew the rules, could set up the play, knew when to declare a player as eligible. My daughter is like that in her sport. She knows when to chase a ball, which team was the last to touch it, when it is not worth the energy to go after it.
But they do really need to love it to make it in college. Even my daughter who loves her sport had some periods when she wanted to quit. It’s a ton of work and they are exhausted at the end of a season. A good exhausted, but tired.
S was always talented, you could see that in kindergarten. He had an uncanny natural feel for his sport, and was a very good overall athlete. However, he was more of the solidly top quarter type good than a ridiculous standout type good. He took a big jump up during Middle School when he got more committed to his sport. He took another big step after a disappointing freshman season. I thought he was a solid D2 / D3 competitor after his sophomore season. Then everything came together that summer before his junior year. He’s a junior right now, and has multiple top 10 D1 scholarship offers.
He was never even the top athlete in his club or school until probably late in his sophomore year. Six months later he was nationally ranked. When everything came together, it really came together.
I will say though the people who know the sport more than me, like those who have coached and played at the college level, were calling it earlier. They thought he would be good enough for the local D2 before I did, and they were predicting that he would be too good for the local D2 six months before everyone else saw it. Most of those guys are working with him in a coaching capacity. If a Coach has experience dealing with athletes that move to the next level, they probably know what to look for. They could see the work ethic and the natural feel that he had better than I could.
The other thing is they knew his personality. I think most D1 athletes have a freakish slightly unhealthy competitive streak. I always thought my kid was off in that aspect until I started talking to guys who he will be competing against in a few years at the top level. They’re all crazy and refuse to lose. I think it’s difficult to succeed at the D1 level without that attitude.
S didn’t start his sport until 8th grade, but by the end of 9th he was doing surprisingly well and we knew he was really serious about it. Between 9th and 10th, we moved near a club with a much higher level of coaching and competition. He improved dramatically during 10th grade, and won his first national medal at the beginning of junior year. By the end of 11th, he decided he wanted to take a gap year after he graduated, and postpone recruiting until the end of senior year. That was a great decision, because he had some fantastic national and international results that year; he was one of the top recruits in his year and ended up with a great D1 scholarship to his first choice school.
When he first picked up the sport, I would never in a million years have expected him to be a recruited athlete (he is not otherwise a very sporty kid). Even as a sophomore I thought he would likely aim for a really good LAC with either a club team or a private club nearby where he could continue to train recreationally. It wasn’t until junior year that we even started thinking seriously about recruitment at D1 schools.
However, S is absolutely passionate about his sport, trains at least 16-20 hrs/wk year round, and is eager to continue competing in college. Unless a kid truly loves their sport, and is willing to put in the long hours and hard work involved in being on a varsity team, I would not encourage them to accept an athletic scholarship, or choose a school based more on athletics than academics.
Thanks for sharing your stories. I will definitely support D if she wants to do more, but at this point, I think if I had to make a prediction, it’s not going to turn into something serious.
D has always been borderline freakishly fast. It was a sort of “party trick” when she was in elementary school. No one could outrun her - even though she was only in 3rd grade (school went to 5th). She actually stopped running and we didn’t think anything of it and figured she’d probably not be that fast after puberty hit. Then in 7th grade, she joined the track team because you were allowed to put together your own 4x100 relay teams. This year, no one can beat her. And that isn’t a good thing. They have her running with the boys and on Friday, coach pulled her and the boy sprinters over and then yelled at the boys for letting “this girl” beat them all. It doesn’t motivate her, it mortifies her. Which tells me she doesn’t have the “killer instinct” needed.
My D is a freshman D1 athlete in a niche sport, and just finished her season last week. In her case, D1 was never the goal, and athletic money was never the goal. My advice, FWIW, if you’re not a national champion/potential Olympian, is just keep the sport fun, offer opportunities, and the student will find their place naturally. Whether that’s D1, D3, or not at all…
I’ll also second what @twoinanddone said:
D1 sports is a serious time commitment. In season there’s practice 5 days a week for 3 hours a day, required weightlifting sessions twice a week for an hour, private work with the coach 2x a week for 30 minutes, 7 weekly hours of required athlete freshman study-hall time, and that’s before spending many weekends away from campus for competitions. It’s just like having a full-time job while going to college. You have to love your team and sport to make that kind of commitment. There are lots of benefits/perks to being a D1 athlete as well, at least at her school (class scheduling, tutoring, advising, housing), but that only matters because she really loves her sport, her teammates, and her coach.
What year is she? I’ve seen many girls do great as freshmen and sophomores but once they develop physically some can’t keep up. Regardless, they need to have a passion for the sport. As others have said D1 is a big commitment and if they don’t love what they are doing it’s best not to pursue.
As an aside, yelling at the boys because a girl beat them is a terrible motivator and offensive to everyone. I’d be mortified too. And I’d be talking to the athletic director about it.
“When did you know they were good enough to compete at the D1 level?”
When a Div1 coach told me. To be fair, I asked him for his opinion. This was when my daughter was in 8th grade and had a few national medals under her belt.
“When did you know they were good enough to compete at the D1 level?”
If you watch enough games, you can tell where your child will fit in. And the coaches will let you know.
Don’t be fooled that the D1 athlete is better than a D3 or D2. In the top 20 teams, it probably is true but many top D3 players picked D3 over D1 for the academics and for the playing time.
@twoinanddone: Good point. To clarify, I was just using the OP’s verbiage to set up my answer to their question.
What I actually asked that college coach years ago was this: “Do you think my daughter’s good enough to fence in college?” He seemed to think so, which encouraged us to try and follow a course to make that happen.
And there are sports where D1 really is a different world. Basketball is one. There is a big (literal) difference between middle of the road D1 teams and even top D3 teams. Sometimes size does matter.
We have a d who is a D1 athlete… and the transition has been a bit rough. In fairness she got injured before she started college so had to red shirt freshman year to heal. However, the mental part… watching your teammates get better, knowing what true competition looks like and realizing that, though she was the star on her high school team, in college EVERYONE is a star and talented. Even being completely healed the pressure to perform at pre-injury levels was really daunting for her… something she had really never had to deal with… and it was tough… and hard to watch as a parent.
I think when you go through the recruiting process it is fun, exciting, and validates all the talent and hard work your athlete has put in over the many years. But, be mindful that once she gets to the D1 school talent and ability are essential, but so is the mental and emotional side… and knowing your kiddo and how they handle that type of pressure,stress and coaches who demand performance should really be foremost in making a decision.