My daughter was a D2 athlete at a school that was a good academic fit, a really good athletic fit (although we did’t know that at the time since it was a new team), and a fantastic financial fit.
There was a lot of drama on the team, and since most of the freshmen share suites, it was on and off the field. Even so, it seemed everyone on the team did have a smaller group of friends from the team and some fun to be had with the whole group
@planit I’m sorry things haven’t worked out at your daughter’s school. I hope she can find a better situation.
In case it is encouraging to other swimmers considering entering the NCAA transfer portal, my banged up transferee sent out 9 emails immediately after signing the paperwork to enter the portal and already, just 24 hours later, has 7 calls set up. She had one school contact her first, so she is 6/9 on responses to her first round of contact. She’s never been a five-star recruit, and now she’s hurt (healing, but hurt), so she didn’t have any idea what to expect. Thank goodness, it seems like someone will want her, and although I miss her being at home, it’s not where I want her to be next August!
@planit Thank you for relaying your story. Get the swimming pun? Dad joke.
I think often here on CC you only hear about the perfect situations for athletes or near perfect. I think a story like this one helps the people understand the possibilities when you are a college athlete. There are plenty of hardships and some folks that end up changing the plan.
Kids and parents have to understand things can happen while playing college athletics.
@Wombat921 I’m coming into this very late! I didn’t get a notification or anything and I just randomly happened to come back into the forum today and see this post. I very much appreciate everyone’s updates. I have four kids, two of them were recruited for high school class of 2013 and 2015, the younger two are being recruited right now for class of 2019. Things have changed a bit with the NCAA rules allowing much earlier coach contact. Juniors are committing right now, and overall I think this is awful. Junior year is hard enough without adding recruitment stress to the picture. If you are not interested in a high academic school, then maybe it’s fine. But for my kids, the pressure of ACTs, AP exams, hard classes, swim practice/meets, etc. was bad enough without dealing with the onslaught of coach contacts and doing D1 officials.
Regarding my two older kids, my '13 daughter went NESCAC, loved it, had a great 4 years and still managed to row, play water polo, be in clubs, and graduate with high honors. She’s currently a phd student at U Chicago. My '15 son chose to row at an Ivy, although he was also doing NESCAC swim recruiting. Again, it was a great choice for him. He’s graduating next week with high honors, rowed for four years, has a great job lined up, etc. I think in terms of swimming, D3 won here. My son would not have been nearly as happy if he had chosen to swim D1, IMO. Swimming culture is so much more stressful than rowing. If he had wanted to swim, he would have done D3 for sure.
My two younger kids are twins. One has narrowed down her choices to Ivy or a top D3. The other is almost certainly going NESCAC. The main dilemma for the one who is looking at Ivies is the D1 swim culture. I cannot say enough about how wonderful D3 is. If you want to go abroad and if you are hoping to have non-athlete friends, D3 is your best shot. Ivy is not too bad, but it’s still D1. My son found it challenging to make non-athlete friends because the athletes are together all the time, and while he did go abroad he had to do it during the summer.
I hope this run-down is helpful! We’re still in the thick of it and I can’t wait to be done!
@LivesinHobbiton It is so helpful to hear your story. You make a strong case for considering D3 swimming. Thank you!
This is all so helpful—thank you to everyone. We don’t know yet about college swim, but I do have a rising junior and a busy year ahead. Couple questions:
The recruitment questionnaire, Is there any point in filling it out if 1) student has yet to take standardized tests? 2) student doesn’t yet have times in line with slowest on team? Or only has them in one event, for example?
Yes, you can fill out the questionnaires without test scores.
@tiempocompleto We just had a college recruiting talk at our club and they encourage the kids to go ahead and fill out the questionnaires, then follow up with a simple swim resume. My D19 filled them out before having scores in place and as time went on, she just updated Coaches with new information via email.