@Polaris1820 Welcome to the thread. I would highly suggest the “Fencer Vital Statistics at Collages With NCAA Teams” article as a place to explore the college fencing landscape given you son’s rating and GPA. Lots of stats there (hence the title), and it’s a good place to begin.
In response to Post #933, @BrooklyRye wrote: “The value of a recommendation from your personal coach very much depends on the coach and his/her relationship with college coaches. There are some coaches that are pretty toxic when it comes to college coaches. There are some coaches who have little or no knowledge about NCAA fencing and/or the recruiting process. In my view, it is best to know the process and players as well as you can without relying on a personal coach to steer you.”
I wanted to second this – while there are certainly some awesome personal coaches who are helpful, many of them really do not know or understand the recruiting process, so you are better off using resources like the ones on this thread. We have heard about all sorts of erroneous statements made by club/personal coaches (just through the grapevine, not pointing fingers at ours 
),
That said, coaches may be approached behind the scenes as well, so always good to be on one’s best behavior at the Club as well as on the strip. Good life lesson!
Re: posts #933 & 941 (wow that’s a lot of posts!)
Something I don’t recall mentioned previously is that if a fencer has a top choice college they should let their personal coach know. Fortunately my son let his coach know shortly after spring break college visits, because the coach of his preferred college called his coach for a reference. The call was out of the blue, but the college coach asked 2 important things: 1) was his college my son’s first choice and 2) did my son intend to fence through college. Thank goodness my son’s coach answered in the affirmative to both and my son received an email offering a recruitment slot soon after. I surmise that had my son’s coach said I’m not sure to either question the college coach might have moved to the next fencer on his list. It probably didn’t hurt that the 2 coaches were able to speak in their native language.
@helmut? makes a good point. Whatever a personal coach’s relative knowledge, contacts or engagement with college fencing, there are college coaches that may deem it a show of respect to reach out to a prospective recruit’s personal coach. I don’t think that this happens all the time. I imagine that when it does happen it is either because the situation involves a high level recruit, highly respected and/or renowned coach, or an elite school that does not lightly hand out recruitment commitments. In any case, with @helmut? wisdom in mind (ty!), I did not mean to abruptly dispense with the value of a personal coach’s input. I intended counsel to do your own research and to make your own contacts. Knowledge is power.
@Polaris1820 welcome to the thread! My daughter was a C rated fencer when she started the recruiting process, and moved to a B late junior year. Here’s a little more detail to get you started… There are 35 NCAA fencing teams for men. The full list of fencing schools can be found at http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/ncaa-member-institutions
You’ll need to use the filter on the left side of the screen to select “Men’s Fencing” and then you’ll see the results on a map.
A “C” fencer is not going to be a targeted recruit for any of the Ivy League or many of the top 10 fencing teams, which leaves you about 25 schools. You can see the top 10 list of men’s schools here (there’s a lot of overlap between Ivy and top 10):
https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/fencing/nc/collegefencing360com-mens-coaches-poll
So, starting with the remaining 25 schools, you need to start asking questions. Is my son a viable academic recruit? Can we afford the school? What kind of school is my son looking for? For example, CalTech, MIT, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford aren’t in the top 10, but probably not good targets. In the remaining schools there is still a wide variety from large to small, urban to suburban to rural, public and private, and techie (Stevens, NJIT) vs liberal arts colleges (Vassar, Drew).
The document that @fencingmom mentioned can be found on the site fencingparents.org
It is a great resource that lists the current fencers and their rating, as well as the selectivity (GPA and average test scores) of the school in general. As a C fencer, your son will be the best on the roster at many Div 3 NCAA schools, in the middle of the roster in some non-top-10 Div 1 schools.
@fencingmom and @Stencils thanks for your valuable inputs.
These directions will definitely help us with seemingly random college selection process
A few additional comments on @arwarw’s post #933:
- Re: Y-14. I can think of many fencers that I KNOW were on college coaches' radar back then. After all, many of the top Cadets and Juniors were also top Y-14s. Also, Y-14 is the point at which you can fence Opens and Div1, so the best Y-14s are going to be fencing in events the coaches are scouting anyway. They might not care about your Y-14 ranking, but they definitely know who the up and coming future Cadets/Juniors are.
- Re: Height/Weight...in the weapon I am most familiar with (epee), height CAN be an advantage. If a WE recruit is 6' 1", in shape, and fences french grip lefty...that's not a bad base to work from regardless of results/experience. I know that my daughter would stab some people for 2-3 extra inches of height!
Nice showing by Columbia Lions at the Ivies Round Robins winning Men and Women…powerhouse. Proud of Yale finishing 3rd in Men…tied for 3rd in Woman…
Was also at the Ivy League Championships. Aside from the obvious kudos to Columbia – The first outright Ivy League Champions in 6 years – There was some tremendous fencing, some incredible instances of sportsmanship (largely unnoticed), and some very poignant moments of personal triumph. Re the fencing, I think the volume of 5-4 bouts says it all. So many close, dramatic moments featuring some incredible fencing. Re sportsmanship, one moment says it all to me: With a particular match effectively over, and the potential final bout up against an undefeated, pretty overwhelming fencer, one of the captains on the Princeton team inserted her/him self to take a presumed bout loss and loss of the match rather than put this on one of the team’s younger fencers. Re poignancy, in her final bout ever as a fencer, the WS captain of the Columbia team was inserted to fence the potential match and championship-clinching bout. She won the bout with her parents and the entire Columbia team cheering her on.
I didn’t have the opportunity to attend…but was keeping track. Sounds exciting!
Looking at the results from this weekend once again reinforces the importance of considering roster size/depth/strength vs. personal NCAA fencing goals. At the Ivies, some very talented kids not getting the number of bouts needed to be considered for All-Ivy…at least in the women’s weapon category I’m most familiar with.
@SevenDad For clarification…because the team may be deep with great fencers with more seniority, some very talented fencers just don’t get to compete in enough tournaments?
@ShanFerg3: From looking at the results at Ivies and other meets this season, this seems to be the case.
Another thing coaches have to try and manage is to get their strongest contenders for NCAA regionals at least 21 bouts in the season (the minimum number to qualify for regionals). And only 4-5 (12 total per gender, so if you bring 5 WE, that fifth slot has to be taken away from one of the other weapons squads) per weapon go to regionals. For deep squads, like CU, NU, ND, that means some very strong fencers (they might not even be underclassmen) might not get a shot at regionals (a strong showing at which is essential to qualifying for the championship.
Definitely something to consider when choosing a program. Is it more enjoyable to fence for a team that can potentially win the National Championship, even if said fencer doesn’t get a chance to actually compete at the championships and contribute in a meaningful way…or is it more rewarding to compete early in one’s collegiate career, contribute to your team success or failure, and have the opportunity to actually fence at the championships? Interesting conundrum. I could see the merits of each.
In my Ds Div I team (top 10, but not top 5), the coach specifically makes sure everyone in the roster has enough bouts to potentially qualify for NCAA regionals, and then the stats define who actually qualifies. I’m sure everyone has differing opinions, but I view this as the “goldilocks” size (and number of competitions). Not too big (everyone travels and competes some at every event), but not so small that the team is stressed if there’s an injury.
Agree with SF3 that there are merits to each. It is a personal choice; one which requires some real introspection. We know fencers (and their parents) who are very happy with their choice to “ride the bench” on a team with a shot at a National Championship. We also know fencers (and their parents) who are thrilled with their decision to forego a possible National Championship in exchange for greater opportunities to fence and even to gain a National Championships berth. At last year’s NCAAs I spoke with a fencer who made the latter choice. We were talking about a fencer who had chosen the former. The fencer with whom I was speaking said that he/she wouldn’t trade places with the other, National Championship included, for anything in the world. So definitely a personal choice. I will add that not everyone makes the ‘best’ choice. You will know those who were mistaken easily enough – They are the angry, frustrated fencers (and parents)…lol. Choose wisely.
I’m wondering about how much kids practice at college? I thought it was morning and evening but does DIV III practice as much as DIV I? Just wondering things like that. Thanks!
@dinjimh My D’s Div I training schedule -
Fall: (starts approx mid-October)
Weight training one hour in the morning 3x week
Practice 4x a week for 3 hours
Weekly lesson with weapon coach
3 weekend tournaments before break in Nov/Dec before break
Spring: (through NCAAs)
Weigh training 2x per week
Practice 5x a week
Weekly lesson
Return approx Jan 2nd
Away tournaments most weekends between mid Jan and early march
Weight-training and some light practice continues in the off-season.
It’s different by school, but I believe this is pretty typical for competitive Div I programs. Div III is somewhat less, I believe there are limits on practice time allowed in D III.
It’s a lot of time. Time management is key. Labs get written on long bus rides to tournaments sometimes. Scheduling labs and classes that don’t conflict with practice time is a challenge, even with early registration.
For Div I, there’s an NCAA limit of 20 hours/week in season and 8 hours/week out of season.
I think competitions count toward those hours (but they only count a competition day as 3 hours regardless of how long the competition is). Travel to/from may also count.
At my daughter’s Div I school, team practice is about 3 hours a day, 5 times a week in season. With days off after/before competitions. They incorporate lifting and other conditioning into those 3 hour blocks. Private lessons, 1-2x per week above and beyond the team practices, but I think these are only 20-30 minutes long.
As noted by stencils, it’s a lot of time.
This schedule seems to coincide with competitive fencers schedules prior to college. But, only 1-2 privates a week? That’s a bit of a surprise.