<p>Ivy</a> League Sports</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>interesting lnk…thanks
very interesting to note the above ^^^^</p>
<p>Is anyone else surprised that the “Gentleman’s agreement”/honor that athletes and coaches are expected to observe is just that
that the athlete who accepts that likely letter is doing it with their word–</p>
<p>I know of a couple of situtations whereby the a young lady accepted a LL from a HYP and then went a different HYP …and the hs school and coach are now thought of in very bad light</p>
<p>^I think it’s pretty cool that so much of the process is based on honor and that it usually works out.</p>
<p>The kids who receive LLs after promising to enroll and end up attending another school not only screw the coach and team, but also the kid that wanted to go there but didn’t receive a LL.</p>
<p>I’m a little confused here. Y’all are stating that it seems an athlete is receiving an LL after promising to enroll, and yet the guidance specifically says a candidate is not required to make a commitment.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We feel that way too…the student verbally commited to a HYP and accepted the LL, then she changed her mind and went to a different HYP…
the hs/coaches etc all looked bad because of what she did…</p>
<p>What is interesting is that there are those student’s who miss the point of the LL and the honor behind the “system”…the trust the coach has in what the student is saying --Coaches do not give away LLs to every recruit–they do it because they trust the word of the recruit–and expect the recruit to show up.</p>
<p>One coach told us that a recruit got the LL and then never showed up for practice–that burns the hs coach/team for the rercuits coming behind him…</p>
<p>We know of a student who claims a coach is going to get her a LL “just in case” she changes her mind…What head coach gives a LL away for a kid that has already verballed elsewhere??</p>
<p>With all of the worry about the value/weight of a LL …seems the bigger risk is for the college coach, not the student</p>
<p>Our student’s hs coach does not believe in the scholar-athletes taking a lot of OVs…and expects that the kids will be honest and forthright with the college coaches…honesty and honor matters.</p>
<p>thrill: almost all recruited athletes “commit” to one coach, one school. And it’s all on honor, there are no “real” legal documents that change hands. Only admissions “legal” accepts an athlete, and even then you can get kicked out of a school, a student really never has any thing binding with any university. if you do something they don’t like they’ll refund your money and show you the door.</p>
<p>So, coaches ask athletes to promise to come to their team/school. They also ask for the athlete to not “promise” anyone else. Bigamy is frowned upon:) And physically impossible to be at two schools at once:)</p>
<p>In return the coach promises to support the athlete through admissions, which is a LL at ivys or a coded application at uc’s, etc, most schools have their version. But non of them are real guarantees, the guarantee is that 99% always go through.</p>
<p>My D committed to:</p>
<p>1 coach
1 school
and filled out 1 application</p>
<p>and even though she was the number 1 recruit in the country in her sport, the wait to hear from admissions was agonizing!</p>
<p>The guidance from the Ivy League Deans, especially where it states that “a candidate may not be required to make a matriculation commitment” absolves any sense of an ethical violation on the student’s part. If a coach asks a student to make that commitment, then the only one at fault is the coach.</p>
<p>Thrill, I don’t know if you’ve been through the process, but when the coach inquires about the candidates level of commitment, he’s going to want to hear words to the effect of, ‘this is my #1 choice’, or “I’ve given it a lot of thought and I want to be a Tiger,” before using one of his LL slots. Is it a matriculation commitment? Not in a legally binding sense of the phrase. Is it unethical to misrepresent your level of interest to the coach? I believe it is.</p>
<p>^I agree with varska. Coaches can only support so many applicants, and naturally will want to target their support toward applicants who will show up in the fall.</p>
<p>Could an applicant “legally” parlay their athletic/academic talents into multiple LLs and acceptances? Trophy hunting, if you will. Of course they could, and some have. But I would strongly discourage it.</p>
<p>Varska, if coaches are doing that then they are putting an 18 year old in the position, at a minimum, of having to choose their words carefully. My point in all this is that I had, in the past, felt some discomfort when reading about these young people ‘verballing’ to attend somewhere and then deciding to attend somewhere else. At least in the Ivy League, the direction to the coaches is to not ask for that ‘promise’, and that the kid should be aware that it should not be asked of him.</p>
<p>Coaches have been doing the recruiting rodeo for many years and have met literally thousands of prospective recruits.</p>
<p>If there is any doubt at all in the coach’s mind about his/her school being the #1 choice, he/she will pass on that player. It is better for the coach to get his/her next choice, than use a precious LL and get nothing for it. Nothing forces a coach to use a LL on your athlete (just like nothing the coach can do can prevent the recruit from seeking multiple LLs). The coach’s “gut,” I would bet, can determine whether the kid is seeking other LL’s.</p>
<p>So, interpret that as you wish. During our recruiting, DS received oral offers from multiple IVY’s. Not a single coach conditioned the offer on withdrawing interest in other schools. But every single coach wanted to know if their school was his #1 choice. DS could have simply lied and told each it was first; but the process doesn’t work like that in general.</p>
<p>Indeed, by the time the process gets to the point of submitting the app in the expectation of getting a LL, most recruits have visited all schools, met with the team, coaches, admissions, students, ate the food, attended class, and partied like there was no tomorrow. The recruit has made his/her decision.</p>
<p>Now, on the flip side of the coin: you have nothing until you have something. For the recruit, irons must be kept in the fire until nothing turns into something.</p>
<p>While the official rules mean one interpretation to you; the real experts are the coaches and the complaince officers. If there violations were routine; if the kids were being denied choices, their very involved parents would probably be a vocal group.</p>
<p>^exactly that</p>
<p>^
^
Where is the “LIKE” button. :D</p>
<p>Very interesting. I feel silly for not having read that before now. And here we thought a certain Ivy coach was being especially nice to D by giving her a LL when she still had one more OV to complete and had not verballed to him. As it turns out, the fact was he wasn’t allowed to require her to give up that last OV opportunity in order to get a LL. But I suppose he still could have passed on her altogether, right? At the time, many CCer’s thought her case was unusual.</p>
<p>Well, the question is what do you do if a coach doesn’t follow this rule and tries to exert undue pressure? Complain afterwards?</p>
<p>I am assuming that the “pressure” to which you refer is a time limit within which the coach requests an acceptance of the offer (which is, of course conditional on getting admitted). There is nothing in the IVY rules which preclude a coach from setting a time frame to commit to the school. The rule prohibits a coach from conditioning the LL on certain things (matriculating, visiting, withdrawing the app pending at the other school) – the rule doesn’t say or even imply that the recruit controls the calendar/timing.</p>
<p>The recruiting process in the IVY’s especially is a combination of a game of musical chairs and a crap shoot – both for the recruit and the coach. Neither is required nor expected to wait for the completion of every athletes’ visits.</p>
<p>No IVY coach will give an open ended offer when he/she has a limited number of roster spots to fill. From the recruit’s standpoint, if, but only if, he/she is at the tippy top of the recruiting pool will he/she be able to get a little more time to decide from the moment the coach decides he/she wants the athlete (and even then, the time will be short - say a couple of weeks). (In other words, if the OV went well, the recruit gets an offer with a time frame to accept attached – sometimes the time frame will be a week; less often will the offer be open 2 weeks; less often open 3 weeks, etc.)</p>
<p>In our case, OVs went over a period of 4 weeks. We were able to keep options open until the end; but, make no mistake, there was intense pressure from the schools to make a decision. But never once was the discussion cast as a “LL v. make a decision”; it was cast as a “make a decision now because we need to move on” issue. </p>
<p>While the distinction is a fine one, there is a distinction.</p>
<p>Stemit,
the “time limit” set by the coach was to make a decision quite a bit BEFORE October 1 and before the other OVs were completed, all of which were scheduled one after the other starting as soon as school started. And yes, it was explicitly stated that if the athlete was going to a certain school on an OV, the coach would move on. It turned out to be a bluff, but several recruits committed on the spot at their OV.</p>