Question: NCAA Div. 1/Ivy League/Track: Help!!!

Parents Forum
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One extremely smart kid (top of class, like a 5.0 and 1550) went to Stanford as a recruit and was quite unhappy at how 'outside' the regular flow of University life one is as an athlete. For example, if you practice from 1-5 pm, you can forget all the classes offered during those times. The teams travel and play year-round; you are flying around the country. Extremely demanding pace with very little breathing room for other interests, academics, or relaxing.

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<pre><code> Alumother, your thread has gotten hijacked a bit, but I wanted to reply to this. I am fairly closely related ;) to a current Stanford student-athlete--who btw was just named to the First Team Pac10 All-Academic Team in his sport. I DO agree with SBMom that athletics at Stanford is demanding and that you can't do everything if you are a student athlete. But one of the hallmarks of Stanford has always been that the faculty and administration have consistently demanded that student athletes be students first. On the team with which I am familiar, it is not at all uncommon, for instance, for students in fact to take afternoon classes and to arrive at practice at 3, rather than 1. Also, Stanford has evening classes and sections as well. My S had an internship off campus last quarter and twice a week he arrived at practice at 3:30. It did not affect either his performance or his playing time at all.

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<p>As far as travel, it may be that some teams "travel year round". But my S had only about 5 weekends of travel in the sport this year. This does necessitate missing Friday classes on those 5 weekends. But the travel is pretty fun! The guys study in between their games and have their laptops, etc., with them for emailing anything that might be due. Postseason can be wacky for the teams as it is not uncommon for players--especially the basketball players during the NCAA tournament in March--to fax in exams from their hotel rooms. But the coaches hired by Stanford are always hired with the understanding that Stanford won't compromise its admissions or academic standards just because the kids are athletes--to the chagrin of the alumni fans who would sure like to get a championship football team.....</p>

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<p>No worries. This thread in all its permutations is still very useful to my original goal....</p>

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<p>BTW, and now COMPLETELY off topic, the "boys", when they travel by air, are required to wear suits and ties. You can imagine what a heady experience it is when 25 attractive young men in suits and ties (but with their backpacks ;) ) walk onto the airplane with coaches, trainer, SID etc. in tow. Usually the crew makes an on-board announcement because everyone is wondering who these impressive young men are!</p>

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<p>patient, I'm sure my D would love to be on one of those flights ;)</p>

<p>I am glad your S's experience has been wonderful. I am sure the 'landscape' varies at any school with the sport, the coach, etc. My anecdote was just that-- one kid, one sport, and one experience.</p>

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<p>
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A fact is that there are significantly less than half the college wrestling programs now than there were 30 years ago, and while to not the same degree, there has been an impact in several other "minor" sports. Almost exclusively it is a result of the schools compliance with T9.

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I don't buy that argument (as a track runner ... one of the most affected sports). The vast majority of colleges "lost" money in their sports programs before Title IX and the vast majority "lose" money now. Title IX required schools to provide an equal opportunity and this certainly led to an explosion of additional opportunities for women athletes. Schools had a couple choices of how to make that happen. They could add some women's spots and cut back on the men's and keep the total pool of athletes relatively flat ... this is the route most "big time" sports schools have taken and has creamed minor sports like wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, etc. While other schools have basically kept their full slate of men's teams and also provided a full slate of women's teams ... ironically some of the better academic schools have followed this path (classic body and mind education perhaps?); schools such as the IVY league and the NESCAC (Williams, Amherst, etc). </p>

<p>Also ironically the schools that spend more on sports ultimately cut back the most on men's sports with Title IX ... their model cost more and providing lots of opportunities to both men and women apparently is too expensive for most of them.</p>

<p>The couple things that, to me, would get schools out of this bind would be .... 1, the elimination of athletic scholarships (the same athletic budget could fund many more teams and any students truly in need will get financial aid) ... 2, looking at football which is a huge expense and drives many more male participants than any female sport.</p>

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<p>to the OP ... lots of great advice so far ... I would add these comments ..</p>

<p>1) check ... <a href="http://www.ncaa.org%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.ncaa.org&lt;/a> ... which provides the recruiting guidelines by division by sport</p>

<p>2) in general coaches <em>can not</em> proactively communicate with a recuit before the summer before the student's senior year. However, the coaches <em>can</em> respond to any contact initiated by the student.</p>

<p>3) if this athlete is a high DI athlete plently of programs (DI, DII, and DIII) will contact her proactively. That said track is a relatively minor sport in college and a lot of the recruiting is very regional.</p>

<p>4) So I'd recommend the student reach out to schools and coaches. As recommended by others I'd also recommend first searching for an academic fit and then worry about the athletics. Once she finds schools that interest her check the track team's web site for team member profiles (which should give her strong clues of how she would fit in this program) ... and also a contact point for the program; send them an email; their response will signal their level of interest.</p>

<p>5) Finally, what does this student want out of her college athletic experience. To be on the best team possible ... even without a scholarship and maybe being a minor player on the team? Definately be on scholarship? To be a main cog on the team even as a freshman/sophmoire? To live for academics and the sport ... or to have a more balanced college experience?</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>Is Davidson similar to the Ivy League in terms of the time commitment for athletics?
How would that compare to the more athletic DIIIs like Williams?
Thanks!</p>

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<p>I'm not sure I could add much that hasn't already been said. I think it's nice of you alumother, to try and help your friend :)</p>

<p>We were the ones who contacted coaches in my son's case. We live in a very middle-of-nowhere place and none of them would have heard of him otherwise. His sport is not even offered at the state schools where we live anyway, so they were out. </p>

<p>As mentioned, he first looked at schools which offered what he was looking for in terms of academics. Like your friend's D, he had grades/scores/rank that put him in range for elite schools, and did apply ED to one of them (was later rejected after ED deferral). In his sport, the Ivy school he applied to is not near the level of D1 that other D1 schools are, as others have mentioned. In fact, ironically, his first choice D1 school had a small series of games against his second choice D1 school and the Ivy school was severely beaten ;) . And his second choice school was not even a power-house D1 school in that sport! So I'm pretty sure that even if he'd been accepted at his first choice that he would have been a good fit on the team; meaning, probably would have been participating even as an underclassman.</p>

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<p>Here's a bit of historical perspective.</p>

<p>When the NCAA determined to re-organize college football in the 1980s (because the big football factories complained about sharing money with the have-nots), they established progam standards that would have kept most of the Ivy League and others out of the club, so to speak. As I recall, only Penn, Yale and Harvard would have remained in Division I under the initial proposal. Also, at the time Yale had a very sucessfully football team. Division IA was created to keep schools such as the Ivy League colleges, other privates like Duke, Vanderbilt and Northwestern, and even many midsize state universities from threatening to abandon the NCAA and create another organization. The three colleges I mentioned all remained in the Division 1(major classification), and their football games against Division IA schools count equally in the standings.</p>

<p>Incidentally, another mini-revolt started when again the big-money programs proposed to vote out the 'basketball only' colleges in the 1990s. I think that Title IX made the basketball only schools realize that protecting their share of the revenues was imperative. So the big-schools' idea was opposed and consequently dropped. But of course, the big-schools prevailed anyway by the law of the marketplace. No 'basketball only' college has won the Division 1 NCAA tournament in about 20 years, and it's getting harder and harder for such a school to win it all. Big school = football = big money = big revenues.</p>

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<p>Davidson is a GREAT place for student-athletes. It is one of the schools my son considered the most before making his decision. It is a small D1, which does give athletic scholarships, and consistently attracts a very impressive group of high-achieving students. I would think that the commitment is probably comparable to top D3 programs (which often are very much like smaller D1 programs in terms of caliber of play and time commitment). Look at the rosters of the sports there and you'll be amazed at the number of National Merit and other high-achieving kids on their roster. I believe that they also won their conference in basketball this year? </p>

<p>Depending on the sport, their sports programs may be at the top or middle-to-lower in the conference (Southern Conference I believe). They often play the Ivy League teams during the course of the season and I believe are at about that level of play although I'm sure it depends on the individual sport, how competitive they are.</p>

<p>SBMom, good point about individual experiences. Even within a team, you'll find very different views about the athletic experience if you talk to different athletes on the team. Some love it, live for it, couldn't imagine life without it, and others view it much differently. It's just that it's always tempting to make generalizations and I think each person should take a close look for him or herself. E.g., people often talk about how you can't be an engineering major at a D1, but in fact on this particular All-Academic Pac 10 team, I noticed two engineering majors (one mechanical First Team, one civil Second Team)....so it may be hard but it is not impossible.</p>

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<p>funny....someone with a son on Stanford's baseball team is the one who told me it was almost impossible to be an engineering major and be on the team </p>

<p>;)</p>

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<p>Alumother, I apologize for hijacking your thread, again, but I feel compelled to respond.</p>

<p>Since this thread started about D1 Ivy scholarships, or the lack therof, I will include this link as being somewhat on target, discussing what it took for Patriot league Bucknell to reinstate its wrestling program. An alumnus that had the money wanted to fund the wrestling team from his own pocket, but was had to pay to fund a women's crew team in order to "donate" enough money to fund wrestling. Certainly there are other schools that have strong alumni support, but maybe not deep enough pockets to fund both a wrestling team and a women's sport as well. Many of these would be your 400+ schools that lost wrestling.</p>

<p>Philanthropy Assists a Sport
That Struggles with Title IX
by Susan Crawford, chair of Bucknell's Board of Trustees</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bucknell.edu/About_Bucknell/Offices_Resources/Communications/OpEd/Crawford-6-27-04.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bucknell.edu/About_Bucknell/Offices_Resources/Communications/OpEd/Crawford-6-27-04.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>To 3togo, track, I would say has been affected, but not like wrestling. To say that T9 did not cause the dropping of several hundred men's programs in a variety of minor sports is just sticking your head in the sand. Almost no other schools out there have the endowments the schools you discussed as adding women's sports do. And again, I am not saying T9 is bad or good, but it was definitely the catalyst that caused this. Sports in this country has grown even larger with the advent of ESPN, followed by how many other channels devoted soley to sports. It would seem unlikely that colleges would drop programs for which there was and is clearly a supply of athletes and a demand for unless there was some other factor in our sports laden society. Wrestling, along with track, and some others is fairly inexpensive to run. If you have a mat, all you need is new singlets every 5 years and some coaches. Consumables for a college wrestling team would be on the order of a few thousand $$ a year at most.</p>

<p>For some statistics, men's track according to College Board has 267 outdoor D1 programs, 154 D2 and 251 D3. Wrestling is down to 87 D1, 42 D2 and 97 D2. Swimming, my personal sport, has 141 D1, 51 D2 and 192 D3, all for men. I'll throw in that there are 77 D1 women's field hockey teams, 26 in D2 and 155 in D3. I believe with only 10 spots in any one "competition", wrestling would have the smallest roster requirement of all these sports as well.</p>

<p>I found 2003 statistics that showed about 500K HS boys were in track, 240K in wrestling and only 95K in swimming, and a mere 61K (2001) girls in HS field hockey.</p>

<p>Since 1972, 441 colleges have dropped varsity wrestling, including a handful of JUCOs and about a dozen that re-instated wrestling. A whopping 79 were in CA. So about 60 percent of college wrestling has just disappeared, despite being about the 6th most popular participation sport in HS for boys. While other sports can say that they have lost out, I don't think anything compares to wrestling. There are 4 times as many boy wrestlers as girls playing field hockey, yet there are more collegiate FH teams than wrestling. The one way that wrestling could actually make a comeback is if more colleges start sponsoring women's wrestling, which is now a sport in TX and may be heading that way in other states as women's wrestling gets more popular. Parents and school boards cringe at girls wrestling boys at the HS level, and that might lead to more states following suit. If the NCAA followed suit, who knows?</p>

<p>I do agree that less football can really help in all other sports. One of the colleges that my S looked at quite closely was York College of PA. No football, but a very healthy sports program that has over 30 recruits listed this year for wrestling. Most teams don't have 30 kids total. But they don't have football, just last month opened a huge new sports complex and building, and have a ton of competitive D3 sports. The key: not having to fund a $10M football complex I guess. Everyone else won. The kids there sure didn't seem to mind not having a football team. Due to distance and a couple other factors, he wound up all the way at the other end of the spectrum, at Mount Union in Ohio, the perennial D3 football national champs. The benefit there was the facilites were very good as well for D3 since football is so important. I believe they are the anomaly though, the middle of the road football schools in D3 with wrestling had pretty crappy facilities for everything but football. All in all I am glad my kid wound up where he did.</p>

<p>For us, it certainly narrowed the college search down. Only about 10-15% of 4 year colleges have wrestling, so we eliminated almost 90% right off the top.</p>

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<p>Not only is this thread hijacked, but going in multiple directions at once! DDM, was it I who said that to you, or another baseball mom? To be fair, the kids who are on the all-academic team with engineering majors are at UCLA and Arizona. I am willing to bet that there have been plenty of athletes at Stanford over the years who have gotten engineering degrees, though. Also pre-med, etc. The doctor who operated on my knee was also the quarterback who led Stanford to one of its extremely rare Rose Bowl victories (and my knee is great, thank you for asking :D). It's probably the exception rather than the rule, but I just don't like it when people paint with too broad a brush.</p>

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<p>i hope this isn't off topic, but what do you parents think of a high schooler recruited by and accepted to Harvard for a sport, but then decides she doesn't feel like playing that sport in college before (high school) graduation? </p>

<p>it this ethical? is this fair to the val of the hs who was waitlisted at Harvard?</p>

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<p>I think she has a future in Investment Banking.</p>

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<p>patient, what difference does the kid's major make? I think it is incredibly impressive to play a D1 sport and maintain a 3.0 (or 3.91) average even if your major is undeclared!! :D Certainly something to make a mom very proud!!</p>

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<p>NJres...LOL...I believe that the registrar hunts you down if you haven't declared by the end of sophomore year, but that he has to hunt down a very large percentage of the class....it's a running joke. I once heard they give you ice cream if you declare before the deadline. I am not sure that one major is easier than another. I believe that mathematics and computer science is fairly challenging :D.</p>

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<p>raindrop- I think it is pretty lousy to decide not to play the sport for which you have been recruited before you even start! The coaches have a limited number of slots and there are a lot of kids who would have worked very hard for the team if given the chance. College athletics doesn't work out for everyone, and you have to make the choice that is best for you and your academics if the athletic commitment is too much for you or is making you miserable. However, to essentially use it to get a place at a highly selective school and then to let the coach and team down is pretty crummy, in my opinion.</p>

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<p>Davidson is a rare place.Sports are big there,but the emphasis absolutely is on academics.Beautiful campus.Very traditional liberal arts.My impression of the students attracted to the school is that they're above all very serious about their studies.Compare the school's track records and current performance levels with the other schools you're considering.Davidson,to my knowledge,does not have an indoor track.</p>

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<p>My son was recruited by Davidson for track/cc. He was impressed with his contact with the coach and applied (at the coach's urging) for a big scholar/athlete scholarship. He decided he wanted a larger, northern school, but I think Davidson sounds like a wonderful place for a runner.</p>