Looking at where you daughter would rank at the conference championship is a much better indicator. I doubt a coach has much interest in supporting a recruit who is faster in an event than their current best swimmer in that event, if they are still well outside of the conference standard.
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Part of the problem may be her actual times vs SwimCloud calculations.
From what I understand, you daughter only has LCM times. Is that correct?
I’m our personal experience, SwimCloud conversations to yards can be quite aggressive. In our case, my swimmer’s converted LC times are significantly faster than actual SC times. Could that be part of the issue? Could she ask about specific LC standards they are seeking?
Again, I’d suggest looking at Futures and above times. Not converted - those are not accepted - but actual times. Has she reached any Futures times since you last posted her times? Still, the top D3 schools will be wanting/hoping for Winter Jr times at a minimum.
Finally, could international status be an issue? Someone else will have to chime in, but D3s in particular seem to be concerned with filling other buckets as well with their athletes, and international spots are few at most schools.
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Oh. I missed that they were not referring to championship times.
@NiVo this is true. Many (most?) teams swim tired and unsuited through their dual meet season.
One final thought: the slower the team, the slower the recruiting timeline because they are waiting to see who falls off from the tier above. Have any offered a phone call or agreed to one when asked? If so, ask specifically about timeline and current numbers.
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conversion tables (https://swimswam.com/swimming-times-conversion-tool/)
are standard conversion tables that are widely used and not from swimcloud. if the argument is that the swimming conversion table are biased or distorted, this argument would rule out all international swimmers, which is obviously not the case, since many swim in D1/2/3.
The argument against chancing an athlete that would rank top5 (including top 1) against the entire existing team times through their 2022-2023 season including conference championship factually only stands if the current coach has positively recruited new swimmers for both 2023 and 2024 who are all substantially faster than the current team.
if a coach is waiting for other swimmers to drop, wouldn’t he/she want to engage on a call with a swimmer who is faster than the vast majority of the existing team, just in case those who drop don’t go to his team. one would certainly think that’s his job.
seeking only a comparison with future time maintains the conversion problem in many cases, since races are often in SCM which then need to be compared with futures times in LCM. if the conversion tables are biased and unacceptable, then there is only very limited comparisons available.
am surprised there are so many experts providing advice, yet no one answers the “chance me” request for a question that has a decent amount of clarity
We, as ‘experts,’ can chance your daughter on here - “she has a great chance at that ‘mid-tier’ NESCAC and you should be getting a call any day now.” We aren’t the coaches, we aren’t the AOs. It doesn’t help you for us to chance her, especially if she doesn’t get the calls.
IMO, if she wants swimming, the schools on her list should include those where she has a stronger chance of being recruited. You are really limiting the schools by only looking to Ivies or NESCAC or Top 30 or New England or whatever. It doesn’t seem to be working as you aren’t getting calls. Look at some other good swimming schools (for her). Many of them will have really good academics too.
If she decides “Nope, I want to go to Middlebury or Tufts without swimming” that’s fine too (and she can make that decision in Sept) but she needs some swimming schools in the mix. Get the recruiting spot and then reject it if she doesn’t want it or gets a better option.
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I’m still a little confused.
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Is your D seeking a ‘slot’ at a highly rejective school, or just a spot on the team if she can get through admissions without the coach’s support? Most teams have many more walk-on spots that supported slots (other than the very top ranked teams, which don’t allow any walk-ons at all).
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Will your D have any tapered SCY times this season? I know that she’s international and swimming SCM, but you also said that she’s been training in CA so I’m not sure where her spring meets are. My understanding was that coaches are simply more interested in SCY than any meter times, since there are different formulas for converting times, so any converted times add yet more uncertainly to the process.
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You just told us how she’d rank in several events at a NESCAC school but didn’t say if you were comparing it their tapered champ times vs midseason times. You should ONLY be comparing her times to this year’s conference champ times (or Natty times after next week).
However, even with that information, and as others have said, the only one who can accurately ‘chance her’ at any given school is the coach. For example, my D appeared on Swimcloud to be a top recruit at one school, but the coach already had recruited someone else in her stroke, so he told her very directly that he could not support her in admissions. (That recruited swimmer had not yet posted their commitment on swimcloud. Until they do, coaches hold that info in strict confidence, as they should.)
No one on CC has, or ever will have, access to that kind of behind-the-scenes information.
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Wow, that got a bit snarky by OP.
I’m a former college athlete, and I have a son who will be going thru the recruiting process soon. I would have never thought of coming to CC to discuss my son’s recruiting chances. Those questions are for school coaches, club coaches, athletic departments.
I do however value the feedback from all of the veterans on this site for they have helped me navigate this highly selective admissions world for my older two children. Because of this site, our expectations were kept in check—we’d all like to think our kids are amazing, and may be they are—but the reality is that there are many amazing kids in this world.
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our expectations are pretty much in check because they are measured by the amount of active conversations and dialogues with coaches so are interested in either/both face to face/pre-read/recruit. indeed their voice outweighs that of CC experts because they are the decision makers, together with admissions.
it goes without saying that D24 is seeking to be recruited, rather than a walk-on spot. And indeed, she’s not interested to get recruited at all cost to a school with lower academic standards for the sake of swimming. That’s particularly true because she’s near assured to gain acceptance to a Canadian University with a competitive program, with either recruited or walk-on status.
indeed, we believe that by comparing D24’s PBs with the best times achieved by entire team of specific schools through their 2022-2023 season forms a great basis, indeed without the coach’s knowledge of how new recruits will impact his reasoning.
of course, D24/foreign swimmers will have no SCY or LCY times before the summer and if they decide to train in the US over the summer.
without either past experience or coaches insider knowledge, I would venture to chance D24’s overall changes at 50% recruited, 30% walk-on, 20% attending a D1 school without swimming
It is comments like this that make us think that you don’t have good understanding of the swimming landscape in the US. There in no such thing as LCY.
Swimmers compete in SCY or LCM, and the championship cuts are published in both. Your daughter has LCM times, which is why I suggested you take a look at the various championship qualification standards.
What are you trying to gain from this conversation? You ask a question, helpful people respond, you respond back with something that feels like a rebuke to that answer/you know best.
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I have been hesitating to chime in, but the bottom line is that you can gauge your daughter’s chances far better than anyone here, based on the feedback you are getting from coaches.
Things like being told you are one of the coach’s top recruits, being asked for preread materials, speaking/texting every few weeks with one of the coaches are all good signs, and increase the probability of being recruited.
Conversely, a lack of frequent contact, lack of enthusiasm on the coach’s part means there’s less likelihood of being recruited.
Remember: coaches want to win. In many cases their job depends on it. If your daughter isn’t getting the interest you expected across many programs, it is likely she isn’t at that level.
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Based on current information from the OP, I would say No & No.
At this late date (for '24 recruiting), if you don’t have an active dialog, you don’t have anything.
That being said, my question is: Is all you have done is have your daughter send email requests? If so, you (and your daughter) need to start making direct phone calls and speaking directly to the head coaches and asking specific questions.
As a parent the OP should have no qualms about calling the coaches directly and participating in the negotiations. Kids only hear what the want to hear and there is so much nuance in the recruiting vocabulary, it would be crazy to leave it completely to a teenager.
Forgive me if I have told this story before, but when my son went thru the recruiting process several years ago (different sport), he did not get any return emails from his first choice school. We could not understand it, because his results were competitive with those on the team and better than other recruiting hopefuls who claimed to have a dialog with the coach.
What we later found out was this head coach did not have a great command of the english language and did not answer emails, but he answered his phone and was approachable at competitions. Ultimately contact by phone was made, the process was started and our son ultimately joined the team with a LL commitment. The moral of the story is, if we just waited for a return email, we would still be waiting.
The college athletic recruiting process is arcane and cannot be distilled to single formula. It is dynamic algorithm. I agree with many of the participants on this thread that the OP seems on the spectrum, however based on what he is telling us, there is a lot of low-lying fruit (direct phone calls, looking at a broader range of programs, etc) that have not been harvested.
It will be interesting to see how this turns out. Hopefully a feel good story, but currently reads like an unnecessary/senseless tragedy
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I disagree with your suggestion that the OP (the parent) should start cold calling coaches if they haven’t gotten any traction via email. The process should be driven by the prospective student athlete. A parent cold calling may signal “helicopter parent” vibes.
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Oh, dear. NO. A parent should NEVER be the one to reach out to coaches. The etiquette is that the swimmer initiates contact via email (unless of course the coach reached out first, either via email or on the swimmer’s swim cloud account.)
The KID then zooms and/or talks to the coach, and then texts regularly with the coach(es).
Parents should have zero contact with the coach until much later in the process, ideally not until the campus visit. At that point families have plenty of opportunity to ask questions and get to know the coaches and meet the team, etc.
As @Momofthree24 said, any parent involvement sooner than that is a huge red flag and a probably a sure fire way to get the kid eliminated for the recruiting pool.
OTOH, If parents have questions about finances, it’s fine for them to reach out to the financial aid office (for need-based aid) or admissions office (for merit-based aid), even early in the process. No one expects 17 year olds to be managing the financial piece of the puzzle.
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Pls don’t take my comments out of context.
If the daughter is getting no responses to her emails and it is late in the game from a timeline perspective, the family can continue to wait until it is just too late.
However, calling coaches to follow up on emails, and to clarify perceptions/understandings is all the OP has left. Obviously, this is best done by the kid, but sometimes that may require a level of aggressiveness a young person doesn’t have.
In both my athletic kids recruitment journey’s, they each initiated contact, however when it came to making the final commitments, I was on the phone to make sure we understood everything my kid was being told by another adult.
The kids have worked too long and hard and the sacrifices made too great to leave such an important issue unattended.
The OP clearly has an imperfect understanding of how things work. He should hear things directly from the coach.
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Thanks, fully onboard with your comments, including D24 calling coaches who haven’t responded to multiple emails.
Those who have responded have mostly been clear and forthcoming about their respective processes, the necessary times (which rulled out several D3/Ivy schools, which is both straight forward and extremely useful feedback), the updates they want to receive, D24 ranking amongst recruits, and the number of recruit spots available. Each coach/team/school have their specificities and nuances. Time will tell if she succeeds as a recruit / walk-on / no walk-on college student.
4 coaches seeking times too fast for D24, across Ivy/USA/NESCAC/Centennial (Chicago, Dartmouth, JHU, Tufts)
2 coaches in active dialogue
8 coaches to be called to get clear picture
D24 slot at a top Canadian school, and in her preferred major, with both the necessary grades, SAT, and times to swim in the squad.
Aknowledging she’s very late compared to US athletes, D24 still aims for 3+ pre-reads, and 1+ recruit spot
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How fast is too fast? Let’s use 100 fly, as it’s one of her events (no need to disclose her current time).
I know Hopkins wants NCAA B-cuts, min. Is that similar to the others mentioned?
JHU coach was very forthcoming in his feedback, NCAA D3 B Cuts
All the coaches deemed as too fast provided clear tables of the times they are seeing for recruits, sometimes even for tips/walk-ons. Knowing there are meets coming up, they also politely encouraged update/re-contact if future times make their cuts, one never knows.
Many other coaches are much less clear, possibly because they are lower ranked, and therefore require a bit of a push to get clarity, benefit everyone, save everyone’s time, and focus on true impact conversations. D24 is ramping up these phone calls, after which she expects to focus on a shorter list of more concrel
conversations, hopefully leading to pre XD, recruit starter
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I thought she didn’t want an urban school? JHU, UChi, and Tufts are all pretty urban.
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Invite times were faster this year. I assume a 2023 invite would be the preferred target.
^That was largely rhetorical. Thank you for passing along the information.
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