All of our unofficial visits have been on weekdays. It may take a little more effort/sacrifice on the part of the parents/family (time off of work to drive to/from visits, etc.) but I never presumed a coach would be available on the weekend.
I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask, though…I know of at least one coach who gives lessons on Saturdays, so s/he might make her/himself available to prospects that day.
Looking for advice - new to process. Son is Sabre fencer but grades/scores a little low for Ivy (1350 SAT, 3.8 GPA weighted). He wants to fence in college so very drawn to Sacred Heart - but…I think he can get in to a school with better academics. SH is still D1 so I would guess it is still hard to get on the team? He thinks bc the school is 70% female, they might be in need of male fencers. Any advice? I’d like to see him look at better schools with Club Teams.
@Momma2018 Does your son have a rating? That’s the key to help us understanding where he might be a match for the level of a specific school’s team. There are many fencing schools where those grades are at least a match. I’m assuming your son is class of 2018 based on your user name, is that correct?
Yes class of 2018. No rating. Captain of HS team. His coach has not been that helpful with info - only just got told he should be doing outside competition to get a rating.
With no rating, he will not be particularly attractive to DV1 schools. Even for lower division schools his apparent lack of national experience will put him very low on the depth chart. Even a school like SHU, where your son’s academics may be substantially above average, fields a much more competitive fencing team. This plays back somewhat to his very nice, but somewhat lower than competitive stats for Ivies and elite liberals with fencing programs. For example, even if great schools such as Haverford or Johns Hopkins have lower-level competitive fencers, they can generally pick from the highest level academically. Personally, I would target club teams where your son’s lack of rating will be less damaging and his desire to fence might offset any academic shortcomings. Off the top of my head, have you considered Swarthmore? Top LA school, but I think your son’s stats are in-play, and fencing for an enthusiastic (if not overly competitive) team might help his application…
Thanks for the reality check. That was what I thought as well but I didn’t want to sell him short on fencing. There seem to be a lot of great schools with Club teams so trying to visit some of them.
Do college fencers care about their ratings? My kid fences for his university, but the tournaments that he has been in, so far, have all been unrated. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I’m curious about how much he has improved since HS.
@Momma2018 As BrooklynRye said, if you son has only done HS varsity events, it’s hard for collegiate coaches to compare with other fencers who have fenced a variety of outside events.
That said, there are a few NCAA schools that carry unrated fencers on their squads, or schools that carry a relatively small squad that may take an unrated walk-on just to add some depth to the team. If your fencer really wants to try fencing on an NCAA team, a couple of fencing schools may be good academic matches as well are Lawrence and Lafayette.
Although Lafayette has a fencing team, it doesn’t recruit for fencing at all and seems to totally rely on walk-ons. It is an excellent, selective liberal arts school in Pennsylvania (and one of the few with engineering, which creates a better male/female balance than many liberal arts colleges). Looking at Lafayette’s roster from last year, they currently only have three men’s saber fencers. They are all letter-rated, but it’s such a small squad that (just a guess) they would take a unrated walk-on with competition experience.
Lawrence is a great school in Wisconsin, and like Lafayette has a small roster. I’ll tag @saharafrog to chime in here as they know more about the program and school.
@whatisyourquest
I think many collegiate fencers, once they are established on a team, are less focused on their ratings than they were in high school. I’m not talking about the tippy-top fencers here that may continue to shoot for junior/senior points list or national team status, but just your average, excellent fencer at a Div1 or Div3 school.
Having just gone through the recruitment process, and looking up the ratings of lots of collegiate fencers on lots of squads, even competitive Div 1 squads, many have older ratings that date back to when they competed in high school. It’s not unusual to look up a college senior fencer on a collegiate squad on AskFRED and find out the last non-college even they competed in was in 2013 or 2014. Simply put, many collegiate fencers (again, not the tippy top, but the next level and down) don’t fence much outside of their collegiate fencing season in non-collegiate events.
However, collegiate coaches looking at high school fencers and considering recruiting decisions do care about ratings and tournament results, as it’s a way to measure the relative strength of recruits.
Edit to add: I read your post to fast and completely missed that you pointed out your fencer is already in college. Since most collegiate events are “duals” (one school squad vs. another) – these are not rated events. There are a few collegiate “open” events that are rated, but not many.
@whatisyourquest, for the record, I kind of hate ratings. However, they are most definitely important to competitive fencing programs for at least a couple of reasons. First, the more obvious, is that a higher rating indicates at least some success on the competitive national circuit. While there are perhaps too many “A” rated fencers who gained their rating at local club tournaments, the majority of “A” rated fencers gained their rating by making the podium at a NAC or even at a ROC where the competition is reflective of a successful fencer’s skill. Second, without getting into the weeds of NCAA strength factors, a fencers initial rating can determine his/her initial power ranking in NCAA competition which can affect seeding and other variables in NCAA competition.
@stencils and @BrooklynRye Thanks for the info! Very helpful.
My kid is at a Div 3 school. He’s a rising sophomore and is on the traveling squad, but he has just a D15 rating. Several fencers on his team have an A16 rating, so I guess that they compete outside of the college schedule. My kid is competitive within his conference but he still got crushed last year at major tournaments with big-name schools. No matter, he’s having a lot of fun and is valued by his coach. Three years to go, so I’m sure that he’ll improve a lot in skill level before he graduates. I’m just happy that he found a university that fit his academic interests and at which he could continue to fence competitively.
@whatisyourquest - Can’t ask for more than that! Your child is at the right school, valued by his team, and enjoying himself. We should all be as fortunate.
The great thing about Lawrence is they offer non binding early action with results released in early November.
A huge thank you to all the helpful souls on this thread that guided me in my search for a college.
I committed to a university where I believe I will have a very enjoyable NCAA experience.
(P. S. I wish to make a dedicated shout-out to @BrooklynRye to thank him for his expertise and support. I found his insight to be immensely helpful, which is a statement that will definitely be echoed should any of you seek him out)
@Momma2018 Finally getting back to the interwebs after being away for a couple days. As @stencils mentioned, Lawrence is a mid-west option for an unrated fencer to have a decent chance of walking on to. And as @arwarw said, they offer non-binding early action (twice actually, once on November 1 and again on December 1). DD ended up applying early action 2 - having an acceptance in the bank in January really helped ease some stress for her. In what was probably a mild surprise to her, she fell in love with Lawrence and at the end of the whole process she turned down “better” academic schools because Lawrence just felt right.
I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have about Lawrence and their team, but, full disclosure, I’ll know much more a year from now as DD is an incoming freshman. So far, the team seems very welcoming and Coach Hall looks like he is eager to build the Lawrence program into being much more competitive over the next few years.
Advice I’d give you in your college search - cast a wide net, initially. We started with the list of varsity fencing programs and pared that down to schools that were a good fit for DD (and which she was interested in). Separately, we came up with a pool of schools that were a good fit, regardless of fencing opportunity - then looked to see if they were in the varsity pool, had an active club, or had a nearby fencing center. At the end of the day, most schools DD applied to had a team, club, or access to a fencing center.
If Lawrence at all appeals to your son, you might try emailing Coach Hall. Looking at the current roster and incoming freshmen, they look like they could be short on men’s sabre this year, and perhaps next as well.
Best of luck,
–S.F.
Thank you @saharafrog - Lawrence is on our list for a visit. We are doing the same as you - lists of schools with at least club fencing and then a list of schools that he likes in general, even without fencing. It is a wide net and overwhelming at this point. (We did a lot of visits in a short time and by the last tour, we were dazed!) I like the idea that he will be able to fence as a way to get involved on campus and keep active but did notice that many schools are near local clubs so that might be a possibility even if the school does not have a team.
I had another question. Another parent on the team said that some coaches might designate an applicant as a potential walkon and that can help admission chances. Is that something that happens behind the scenes or does the coach tell you they are doing that?
@Momma2018 I think the ability of a coach to pull for a applicant that is not a formal recruit (meaning athletes not given a recruitment slot) varies from school to school. Our experience is that a coach may offer to send a letter of support to admissions for an applicant they’d like to have, but don’t have the recruitment slots to recruit formally. How much impact it has is hard to tell. You’ll have to trust each individual coach for guidance on this.
If an individual coach offers this, it seems like they must think it has more than zero impact (or why would they bother?), but there are stories I’ve read here on CC (I believe in the predecessor of this thread) of people have been both accepted and rejected with this sort of coach support.
@Momma2018, coach recommendations are not technically for “walk-ons” in the truest sense of the term. Coaches are limited in the number of scholarships, whether it be LOI or LL. Very often a coach will want to recruit a very good fencer, but will have run out of recruitment slots for that gender/weapon. The support or recommendation given to that fencer is to legitimately have them on the team. Walk-ons are really more student-athletes who get into the school on their own academic merits and then ask the coach’s permission to train with the team. In any case, Stencils is correct that it varies from school to school, as well as from coach to coach. Do not be shy about asking the coach regarding the value of his or her support. In some cases, a coach will have more than average clout, although I don’t think you can hope for better than 50/50 in most cases. In some cases, a coach has none at all. Push as appropriate to gauge this.
My son (rising junior) great grades and excellent test scores but unrated due to lack of fencers (State level he competes well) but has been in weekly private lessons since age 10 (high school club now too). Looking for colleges (STEM heavy) on the west coast (LA or SF or Seattle) or east coast (DC to Boston) when he has a decent chance of walking on a well run club team. Is there a list I am missing on the internet cause I seem to have to go to individual college sites and often can’t tell if the club is current or not? I know he is excellent in training and technical but just lacks competition experience.