The Only College Fencing Recruiting Thread You Need to Read

Athletic Recruits
1481

@LimboKid why are you strong in your thinking that Cornell is the next domino to fall? Cornell has a women’s only program that is basically there to comply with Title IX.

I would think that these teams would be the last to go given their role above and beyond their own existence. What am I missing in your calculus?

The other ivies that have successful programs have both a men’s and women’s team would seem to be more at risk candidates. Penn? Columbia? Harvard? Yale? I have no idea how these teams are funded and how much “self funding” goes on but aside from being championship quality teams if you don’t care about the sport and don’t want to spend the money and don’t need the title ix balancing then these would seem more viable “dominos” than a title ix team like Cornell…

1482

Appreciate those of you who wrote me in private explaining the purpose of this forum. Perhaps my blunt, sarcastic tone rubbed certain folks the wrong way. Full disclosure: I stumbled into this thread chasing something about “Stanford dropped 11 sports”. Stanford is one of the schools which accepted me. I did two summer camps there and visited three times. Got a few super close friends there now. In the end, I declined their offer but still consider it a possible grad school candidate. Brown I visited but never applied. Not an athlete recruit but I did swimming, boxing, wrestling and basketball semi-competitively until a dozen APs buried me. A lot of my friends are recruited to Ivy+ schools so I’ve noticed a thing or two.

In my experience, things driving recruiting might look clearer from an outsider’s unbiased perspectives. Here’s my simple framework (no sarcasm, I promise.):

  1. Endowment per student, endowment per faculty and endowment per athlete: Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth are at the bottom end. Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Penn at the top. Stanford, Columbia, Duke, Chicago and MIT somewhere in the middle. These are macro data that limit the flexibility (like a stress test) of each school. This pandemic is the ultimate stress.

  2. Rankings of each sport: If not top 3 or top 5 in NCAA, then it’s a waste of time. I know, someone will say ranking is not everything. But let’s face it, kids work their asses off to get higher ranking in fencing, right? How much funding and bargaining power to recruit that each head coach has is directly correlated to ranking. The conversations among the head coach, the athletic director and the admissions director are about ranking and costs, not kisses and hugs. Of course, a big donor helped too, but that’s history after OVB.

  3. Exposure of a school’s brand because brand equals future donations. This is the only qualitative angle. When each school did their internal audit after OVB last summer, they asked only one key question (e.g. Yale in public) - How much exposure do I have to potential corruption versus the brand glory I get from this sport? Sailing, rowing, fencing, tennis, squash, golf, soccer and cross country all looked vulnerable on this simple cost-benefit analysis. Going back to 2), unless the sport ranks top 3 or 5 to impress a future donor, why have it?

@GlobalFencingMom I correctly predicted Brown and Dartmouth based on 1) to 3). Stanford came as a semi-surprise but we have no clue how much exposure their endowment had before June 30. Soon in Sep or Oct, we may find out that they lost 25% compared to the other Ivy+ schools’ 15%. Stanford has been heavier on derivatives and energy and maybe they took too big a levered position when energy crashed. I now predict that their endowment performance must be really bad on a relative basis to have pushed them to drop 11 sports this early, to announce re-opening plan on June 3, the earliest among all top schools, and to begin taking in wl kids prior to May 1 (something they never did, like ever).

At this moment, I predict Cornell would be next based on the above framework.

Now some good news for recruiting: at least fencing is not tennis or golf or soccer

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-09/dartmouth-sports-cuts-show-pandemic-s-mounting-toll-on-colleges

Side-note on the Stanford recruiting process: Pink sheets were canceled a few years ago when they revamped the recruiting system. Then they migrated to an online link. But that’s all before OVB. No clue what they do now but for sure all head coaches have to jump through ten more hoops to get recruits in. New admissions deans at both Princeton and Penn, so no trust, more hoops.

Hope this note is constructive, as a reference point. I know Class of 2025 and beyond will be progressively harder for Div 1 schools. But there are plenty of top Div2 and 3 schools out there!

1483

@LimboKid I’ve received those private messages in the past. I found them off putting, full of self importance, and hubris. We are adults here able to disseminate what’s useful to us in a post. I enjoyed your contribution, even if I disagreed with much of it. I found that the ones sending the PM’S typically say the most and whatever they want. Often things they’ve complained about others saying.

1484

@LimboKid Thanks for the article link. Statements there regarding Brown and Stanford support my position about these cuts being unrelated to current events and were in their plans prior to the pandemic. Excerpt: “Stanford said it wanted to confront the financial challenge associated with athletics – which arose prior to the pandemic – before it worsened.”

In regards to Brown, “ The cuts at Brown weren’t related to the pandemic and had more to do with fielding winning teams, the Providence, Rhode Island university said in May. It had garnered just 2.8% of titles in the Ivy League over the past decade.”

The schools I mentioned, have to add Penn, have healthy endowments and history of performance. They are unrelated to the factors that impacted Stanford’s/Brown’s decision. Cornell Fencing is important for Title IX and competitive.

1485

@ShanFerg3 I don’t mind private messages. People who wrote me were all nice. No complaints, just patient explanations. Being 18, I don’t mind guidance from older folks as long as they are constructive and not patronizing. After all, the older adults have lots of experiences to share. No hubris so far.

“…disagreed with much of it” like what? Share please. That what this forum is for.

As for the Title IX arguments. If I speak to five lawyers and five coaches, I get 10 versions of what they believe. Auntie Betsy’s new rules will be launched Aug 14. Lawsuits are already happening. As far as my prediction goes, Title IX compliance is transferable, mirgratable and pausable. Economically speaking, Cornell fencing does nothing to Cornell. Sorry, sounds cold-blooded but facts always are; as is cash.

1486

Good for you. We differ in age and experience. Stands to reason our reception to the private messages would differ.

I don’t want to extend this @LimboKid. I stated what I disagreed with in my post already. I’m happy to participate in any convo that comes as an extension of what we’ve discussed. In regards to Cornell, I guess we’ll see.

1487

@ShanFerg3 No, you didn’t. Yup, we’ll see.

1488

Thought this article provides some interesting insight re the Stanford situation.

https://www.insidetrackgarycavalliblog.com/

The writer, Gary Cavalli, is the former Sports Information Director and Associate Athletic Director at Stanford.

Another interesting metric, perhaps not readily discernible to the general public, is the top-heaviness of a school’s athletic department administration. Cavalli notes that there are 37(!) current administrators in the Stanford athletic department. A quick glance at some Ivy League programs indicates that these program maintain an athletic department administrator staff of less than 1/3 of Stanford. That’s a big chunk of change that might well have saved at least some of these programs.

Also, was interested to note Cavalli’s claim that some of the endowment money could have been used and is not “restricted” as may be thought.

1489

@BrooklynRye Thanks for the great article.

Back to cutting sports : Looking at what’s happening at Cal now, maybe athletes staying home is a blessing in disguise. At least they are safe from the virus.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/07/08/social-gatherings-produce-increase-in-student-covid-19-cases/

Imagine what happens when thousands of kids from CA, FL and TX descend upon the 35 colleges in the Greater Boston area or 75+ colleges in the Greater New York City area. They might as well test who doesn’t have the virus by October. The schools can control whatever happens on campus. But unless they lock us up like in real prisons, there’s no way for any control or monitoring of who goes where to see/make friends. From a few news reports, some summer school kids are holding parties to celebrate getting the virus so now they have immunity to do whatever they want. Maybe my mom is right, a ticking virus time bomb this fall…

1490

@BrooklynRye Thank you for sharing the article and your long-time contribution to this forum! It is very sad to see how Stanford’s mismanagement led to sacrificing athletes who are passionate about “Olympic sports” and academic achievements.

1491

Some good news for the fencers: Penn vows to never cut sports! Will others follow?

https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/07/penn-will-not-cut-varsity-sports-ivy-league-ncaa-coronavirus

1492

My information is that Cornell has also assured its stakeholders that it will not discontinue any of its teams. Not sure for how long or if there are any loopholes in this commitment, but there it is…

1493

To lighten our mood, here is my fav SNL from a year ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFia7FhVmuM

1494

This, along with @BrooklynRye’s news on Cornell Fencing, comes as no surprise.

1495

@ShanFerg3 I DO wish the Cornell commitment is true because I love sports and prob will play some at college. Stanford, Dartmouth and Brown all made similar private claims (some at the AD level) at one point or another since March. In fact, you can search and find many recruits online complaining about being told just that up to May 1 decision date. Now, they are “club” players.

Reality is there are the President’s, Provost’s and Endowment offices above the AD’s pay grade. The leadership will rather cut a sport and save a few millions a year, disappoint a few dozen kids (and their families), before considering taking a small pay cut “each” out their million dollar annual packages.

Call me a cynic, but I will believe it when I see it. What stops Cornell AD’s office from issuing an official “not in the foreseeable future” statement to be used in the Cornell Daily? In fact, I was told Princeton and Yale might soon do what Penn did. That will be great news! To be fair, both the Tigers and Bulldogs rank higher on average and have much more per capita endowment.

1496

Returning to the original purpose of this thread, does anyone have thoughts about the upcoming USA Fencing season? Are people making reservations (plane and hotel) for national tournaments? (I just looked, and tickets from NYC to MSP are cheap for the weekend of the November NAC, but I don’t see myself getting on a plane in 2020.) Is it best to ignore hotels at which USAF has blocked rooms, and find less expensive rooms via other web sites? And how best for fencers to get on college coaches’ radar if national points charts and letter ratings don’t reflect any competitions for the last 4+ months? What happens to national competitions, and equal opportunity for fencers from all backgrounds, if airfare skyrockets because middle seats are blocked and there’s less capacity in the system? Will local and regional tournaments be given more weight / prominence? Will more evaluation be done via video? If anyone has input from a college coach on all of this, it would be interesting to hear what’s on their minds. Stay healthy everyone! Wear a mask. (And not just one that’s FIE approved…)

1497

This is largely a matter of opinion and personal decision making…

I don’t think there will be a 2020-2021 USA Fencing season. Certainly not in any form to which we have become accustomed. I don’t see how the entire NCAA fencing season shuts down, there will be all manner of suspensions for FIE fencing, and yet USA Fencing will hold NACs. Full disclosure, I have been in the camp that there won’t be a 2020 Olympic Games, even in 2021, since before they were officially postponed.

Cheap as air fare is, there’s a reason for that. I personally would not book any tickets in anticipation of a NAC. Don’t think they are going to happen. Don’t think you will get COVID refunds or waiver of change fees.

Hotel stays, at least for a couple of days, are considered among the safer activities in the current environment. With bars, gyms, and theater/stadium events at the danger end of the spectrum. Don’t see a difference between the USA Fencing housing bloc and doing this on your own, unless you prefer to stay apart, perhaps even in an Airbnb.

College coaches are being forced to work with new calculus. I don’t think the lack of active rankings affects the top recruits. Everyone knows who they are and what they have accomplished. Trajectory will be a big factor in assessing fencers outside of the top recruits. There is no way to substantively make the case based on rank/rating other than trajectory. Reputable personal coach recommendation may help in this regard.

Lack of equity is always a factor in a sport as expensive as fencing. Issues relating to soaring travel expenses, while perhaps more dire under the current circumstances, are nothing new. Just ask all of the West Coast parents who perennially complain about the disproportionate number of national events east of the Rockies.

If competitive were to continue on a smaller scale, those regional and even local events could act as filler for at least the rating piece. But I doubt those events will rise to the prominence of national events. The competition pool is usually very diluted.

As with the personal coach recommendation, as a prospective recruit, I would pull out all the stops in terms of what a college coach can tangibly evaluate. In a vacuum of active ranking/rating, with perhaps no tournaments at which to view fencers firsthand, personal coach recommendations, video, and other forms of bringing oneself to the attention of a college coach may prove much more potent. A lot of coaches will tell you that, outside of the top recruits, they are not always looking for a “finished product.” They are looking for potential. Video can surely convey this.

My main insights from college coaches is that recruiting is continuing apace. The metrics are a bit different for those out of the top recruiting range, but trajectory is a factor, as well as video, personal coach recommendations, and other less often considered metrics.

These are great things to consider!

1 Like
1498

Princeton also committed not to cut an varsity teams!

https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2020/07/princeton-will-not-cut-any-varsity-teams

1499

What a world we’re in. A year ago my son was in the middle of the recruiting process having just come back from Columbus and having met with four fantastic universities/colleges. I was very lucky and will be forever grateful to have had the guidance of BrooklynRye and SevenDad through the stressful recruiting process for several
Months — they were very patient with my numerous PMs — all the way through to my son’s receipt of his likely letter at his number one choice University in November and acceptance in early December. It was all great. Even finished his varsity HS Fencing career with another Team County Championship in February and had a nice college signing with his HS and club coaches. A week later, we were sheltering in place due to the pandemic. Now we are about a Month away from him heading to college for a very different type of experience than what had been planned. Single dorms, grab and go food and other than labs and a writing class his lectures will be online. The coach had indicated that there is hope for fencing practices perhaps by weapon, but the traditional fall invitationals are already cancelled. Fencing has always provided my son structure and we are so hopeful that he will be able to have it in some form as he transitions to this challenging educational environment at what in normal times is a rigorous University. Fingers crossed for the circumstances in our country to turn around and improve soon.

1500

@Fuzebox87 - I feel your pain as we’re in the exact same boat. The joys of landing a spot on your selected college’s team to this. My son’s college is having kids back, and he was able to register for 1 in-person class, 2 hybrids, and one strictly online, so we’re pretty happy with that. Here’s hoping they can salvage some type of season, even if it’s pushed back a bit.

My son’s school rebuilt its Upper School building last year, so the 2020 grads were asked to write letters to future students that would be put in a time capsule that would go in the cornerstone of the building. My son ended his letter with a quote from Andy Bernard from “The Office”: I wish there was a way to know that you’re in The Good Old Days before they’re gone.” Ugh…

Here’s to future Good Old Days!!