To follow up on cheetahgirl121’s post #19, I’d recommend that parents with kids in a position to be recruited may want to read “Why Maddie Ran”…the story of Madison Holleran, a track star who went to Penn. A few parents had recommended it to me, and I’m working my way through it. It touches on many of the points made above.
I think you can get a good sense of this from looking at the allowable number of scholarships per sport. For example, D1 basketball allows 13, D2 allows 10. Given the limited numbers in basketball, that pretty much means almost everyone on the roster in D1 is on a full ride, where virtually everyone in D2 is on a partial. Not hard to see why there is a competitive difference. In football we see something similar, where the numbers are 85(FBS)/63(FCS)/36(D2). Football as a sport requires a lot of bodies, and therefore the top of the FCS is really only competitive with the bottom of the FBS, and almost unheard of for a D2 school to compete with anyone in D1 when they are awarding 50% of the scholarships.
On the other hand, track and field, volleyball, tennis and water polo all allow the same number of scholarships in D1 and D2. Add in sports like lax (12.6 in D1, 10.8 in D2), soccer (9.9 D1, 9 D2) and swimming (9.9 D1, 8 in D2) where the scholarship numbers are not that different given the sports involved and it is easy to see how a fully or well funded D2 program can compete regularly with most D1 schools in those sports.
The mental part of it is very tough indeed and often catches people completely unaware. It is why, circling back to the OP’s original question, it is very important that a kid love their sport before sailing off to a competitive college program.
@SevenDad The book is What Made Maddy Run by Kate Fagan and is the story of an athlete that had a passion for soccer and had the opportunity to compete for Lehigh but opted to run XCTF at Penn. The choice to pursue Ivy League prestige and compete in a sport she was not passionate about proved to be too much when coupled with depression. Ultimately she committed suicide. But I agree that every parent of any college bound athlete should read it (I believe Harvard gave a copy to every athlete in their program this year).
In some sports it is apparent very early - even 10 or 12 years old. For other sports it is certainly by high school - this is also when others with talent leap frog the early bloomers in some sports because of growth or commitment changes. I don’t agree with the statement about D2 or D3 athletes often being as good as D1. There are only a few athletes talented enough to play D1 that settle for D2 or D3 school in any given sport. There is often a huge difference in the level in ability between different divisions. But it is hard for a D3 parent to see the difference in levels because they do not have a D1 athlete. Most D1 athletes would be very frustrated at a D2 or D3 school. Those good athletes that want good academics can go Ivy league which offers D1 athletics that aren’t at the level of the big conferences, but are still very competitive.
It seems every parent in our neighborhood thought their kid had what it took to play ball in college. What parents often can’t (or won’t) see, is often very obvious to the coaches, though even some high school coaches don’t have a clue particularly in sports that are played outside of high school in travel tournament situations. Most parent coaches don’t have a clue unless they played in college themselves. But a kid good enough for D1 will likely attract attention of someone that knows.
My daughter was recruited by schools in all three divisions. She didn’t settle for D2, she chose it.
One of the best players on her D2 school transferred from a good D1 program (top 25) She was a good player there, but a superstar in D2. She didn’t like how cold the weather was in the north and wanted to live closer to home. The d2 school was just a better fit, athletically and academically. I think the Top 10 teams in D2 each have 10-12 girls who could easily play D1, but they would be bench players, seeing probably 5 minutes a game rather than 40. Or they’d be a started on a team ranked 60th and lose 50% of their games,and never make the playoffs.
The men’s crew at D’s school beat Michigan in the Dad Vail two years ago, head to head, D2 v D1. A D2 golfer can play with a D1 golfer.
I don’t agree with @blueskies2day. There are plenty of athletes that could compete at the D-I level that chose another level because of the academic fit. And it is not hard for a parent to discern the difference between various programs if they talk with the coaches/athletes and remain objective.
Perhaps we’re all getting caught upon the “D1” part of the OP’s question. I think what they were getting at is “When did you know they were good enough to compete in college?” And I interpret that to mean “to be recruited for their sport”.
Of course, there are so many variables that depend on the sport and the school (and the kid)…for example, years ago a friend of mine was a walk-on in squash at a D3 school, despite having played only occasionally prior to going to college. You can’t tell me that same person was going to be recruitable by say…Trinity (which I think is also D3?).
Thank you @SevenDad for putting my question into better wording. I think my lack of knowledge of the athletic world is showing, and that asking about being recruited for a sport probably would have been better.
I do appreciate all the replies. It has given me things to think about.
I think there are a decent amount of athletes that could compete at D1 but end up at D3 for a variety of reasons. I’d say the majority of those types of athletes play individual sports, like track, swimming, rowing, golf etc.
Some of these kids don’t get to “recruitable” D1 levels/times in time for them to be " seen" by the D1 coaches. They post their best marks and performances late in their junior/senior year. leaving little time to get on the scouting board. . There are tons of kids who are very good at sports but don’t know how recruiting works, and neither do their parents. They don’t market themselves, don’t attend camps/clinics, don’t send coaches notes expressing interest. So, if you aren’t making the effort to get actively recruited you may slip under the radar of D1 coaches and end up playing D3, D2.
There are a lot of good student athletes who choose to continue their studies at smaller schools too, and avoid D1 all together.
I have a kid that I thought that would play one sport at the D3 level, but just recently got good enough in another sport that he is being recruited at all 3 levels. He had never even done the sport until this year. We would’ve never known had he decided not to try it. He’s not sure what he wants to do, and is considering D1 and D3 programs. We did notice at a very young age that he was just at another level when playing with kids his age in terms of speed and power. He would be running/playing and it would look like the other kids were stuck in sand.
Back to original question, in my experience through years of coaching, you often find the kids that are great all around athletes very young, like 2nd grade. Those kids then have to have the drive and determination to take it to the next level once they reach high school and the other kids start catching up. From what I’ve seen the kids that have that drive usually involve themselves on club/tournament teams, and practice their sport relentlessly. At our school we usually get a few D1 athletes per year, usually several girls for soccer and lacrosse or field hockey. Boys D1 is more rare, but once in a while we see a baseball player, swimmer or runner. No football,soccer,basketball, guys.
As a counterpoint to RightCoaster’s “you can tell as early as second grade” (and I definitely know a few people who fit that description), I think some kids (in some sports) who maybe aren’t as natural of athletes come into their own over grades 7-8-9. By then, puberty is starting to kick in and perhaps also years of skills training are finally having an impact…PLUS, there will have been some natural attrition…so the kids who stuck with a given sport tend to be the better ones, and their tend to be fewer of them. My daughter (who is going to Top 10 D1 program) was more in this group. I do know of at least one person in her sport who was an even later bloomer and consequently was overlooked by D1 programs while she was in HS…kid made the most recent national squad and transferred to a top program.
As I said up the thread, there are sports where the difference between D1/D2/D3 is very stark. It happens that the most visible sports, football and basketball, have significant scholarship differences and therefore the competitive level is obviously different. It appears that this leads to the assumption that the same difference exists in other less popular sports as well. Many here who know those sports intimately believe this to be a faulty assumption, although I believe that those posters have and will acknowledge that the large majority of the best players in any sport are going to end up competing in the highest division.
And that brings up a point that I think is getting lost here. Athletes who compete successfully at a high level are very competitive people. Often this manifests in aspects of their life outside of sports as well. This attitude is, imho, at least as important as a particular kid’s raw athleticism. It is also easier for a parent to discern this attitude than gauge their child’s athletic ability. But unless a kid is insanely blessed with athletic talent, both the competitive drive and raw ability are necessary to play at a D1 level.
I think this competitive drive is why we consistently see kids with a choice of where to play in college choosing the highest level available to them. Some will not, for rational reasons that effect that particular kid. But most kids with the chops to lay at the D1 level will end up there. To put it in concrete terms and borrowing from another post, most really competitive athletes are not going to choose to play at a lower level because it will be easier to get playing time. Most will assume that they can compete successfully at the higher level. It is just how they are wired. So the question for the OP I think is is your kid that kind of kid?
I pretty much completely agree with this, but only to a point. D1 caliber players choosing non-D1 schools is not rare.
There are plenty of kids that can succeed at very high levels of club sports and still not possess the mentality to thrive in a twelve month, D1 intensity world. Most of the ones with the drive you describe need to play up as high as they can, but there are plenty who play lacrosse but love hockey, are good at volleyball but love basketball, etc. There can be great athleticism and very good skills without passion, and that’s usually only going to work out at a lower level where the sport is less of a job.
A good friend has a daughter who is a ridiculous athlete, a three sport captain type of standout. She can play hockey anywhere and soccer a lot of places, but she’s going to go D3 in-state, closer to home so her parents can come to games and she can enjoy her time in college. It’s MN, so D3 is still frickin’ excellent hockey, but I think that goes against blanket “most will end up there” statements.
Oh, one other point worth throwing out there that’s related to your point: D1 isn’t always D1. There are way more D1 programs than there are good D1 programs. If you get past the high revenue sports, turn away from the top conferences, and dig down into the lower tier of teams you can find a lot of places with the D1 name but poor teams. Someone has to lose, and some places seem to specialize in it with poor facilities, bad student support and miserable funding. But hey, you get to say you played D1 and lost to the #24 team in country in August of sophomore year. So if you just want to go to any school, get some scholarship money and keep going to practice, and if you can play a little bit at a high level, then you can probably find some doormat program to play your sport at a D1 level. But geez, be careful what you ask for. If you’re a person with that competitive drive then this sort of program can crush your soul.
FWIW, this is exactly what I am talking about. The question of whether it is wise to play at a very competitive level is more than a question of straight athletic ability. My own kid chose the FCS Ivy over some options at the lower end of the FBS because for him that provided the best balance. But is is indisputably a trade off, and that should be acknowledged. I think the heart of my point is that for most (but not all) kids playing in D1, their sport is that one thing. The thing they care most about and how they define themselves. If you are not that kind of kid, I would think very hard before trying to play at that level.
Maybe this is sport specific, as you allude to. But Eastern Michigan, which is probably the absolute nadar of D1 FBS football, still beats the D2 champ by a lot to not much. And it probably wins more often than not against all but the top quarter/third of the FCS. I would be shocked if the same does not hold true for basketball, and after watching two family members recently go through baseball recruiting, I am confident the same applies there as well. While someone like @dadof4kids could speak to this definitively, I think you could say pretty much the same thing about wrestling. Other sports, and particularly women’s sports which seems to generate most of the interest here, may be different.
Very true. And I say that as someone who suffered through some really bad seasons at a low end D1 program. On the other hand, playing in a lower division is always going to leave one wondering exactly how good they could have been, or what it was like at the next step up the ladder. At the end of the day, that would have bothered me a lot more than getting smoked by Navy on parent’s weekend (even though I still remember the score, lol). You pays your money, you takes your choice.
Wrestling is a bit different than most sports, because you have some competitions where D2 athletes compete against D1 athletes. So you can see where you stand. Obviously some of the top D2 guys can compete with some of the average D1 guys, otherwise they wouldn’t go to those tournaments. Still, it is pretty unusual for one of them to place very high. When you look at the average talent, there is a pretty big gap between D1 and D2. If you know the sport, you can tell watching the match which level the athletes are at. The pace is faster and the action more technical in D1. Some of that has to do with the athletes coming in, some has to do with the training that they get once they get to college. But overall I think most athletes and coaches would agree that there is a pretty big gap between D1 and D2, and another big gap between D2 and D3. At the Olympic Trials 2 years ago out of maybe 100 athletes I think there was one former D3 athlete and a couple D2, also one club athlete. But the overwhelming majority were D1 alums.
There are outliers who end up D2 or D3 for whatever reason. I know one of each who did very well, the D2 athlete won several medals on the world stage. But he started D2 and then developed into D1 talent. He was too loyal to the D2 coach who recruited him to leave even though he had plenty of unofficial offers of D1 scholarships. The guy who was D3 ended up there because of some immigration status issue, I don’t know him well enough to know the details. Outside of those 2 guys, I don’t know of anyone off the top of my head that was D2 or D3 who could realistically compete at the D1 level.
The D2 national champ at 125 this year was a backup at a D1 school who couldn’t beat their starter. He was the backup to a starter who did not All American in D1, but the backup won the D2 National Championship in a pretty dominant fashion. That is actually pretty typical in D2 and D3. Quite a few of the top kids spent a couple years in a D1 program, then when it became obvious that they could not make the starting lineup they transfer down a level and are immediately competitive for a national championship in D2 or D3.
FWIW, the divisional breaks often have to do with the facilities and training. I am sure that there are many athletes who are relatively close in ability after HS, but diverge a lot during college due to the above.
It also depends on the other schools of the same size in the same region. It’s easier for the school to be D3 in an area with a lot of other D3’s. Colorado College does a lot of traveling to find similar schools. There are little pockets of D2 schools in the Carolinas.
My daughter was recruited at all 3 levels. She decided that although she absolutely loves soccer (plays, is a referee, and volunteer coach for the little ones) that soccer is not the focus of college. She knows she is not going pro and therefore academics come first. So she passed over D1 for a highly ranked academic D3. She couldn’t be happier. She continues to play the game she loves and get the education she desires. There are plenty of students that make that decision.
DI does not necessarily mean top athletics in all sports. I know a girl in our school who has been offered DI scholarships. Her academics are not great. She’s a good, but not great, athlete in her sport. The schools offering her scholarships are mediocre academically and don’t emphasize her sport, but need to fill out their roster because of the requirements to offer women’s athletics comparable men’s. And she’s happy to take it because she needs the money for college. Win-win, but let’s not pretend her DI team is better than many D3 teams.
A D1 athlete may not be happy on a D3 team, and a D3 athlete may not be happy at a D1 school. The emphasis is completely different. Competitiveness of the team is only 1 factor.