<p>How does making the varsity sport team work--is the roster already determined before school starts due to recruiting or can students tryout too? Do different schools have different policies too?</p>
<p>New to this, so thanks for explaining!</p>
<p>Most spots are already filled by high school commits, as they have a signing period in the spring semester. You can try to walk-on, but it’s very hard to get in that way. You will want to submit a video of yourself, playing in a game or in practice. Get them to your coach and tell em you want to walk-on. Of course, walking on mean you are paying for everything (non-scholarship player).</p>
<p>Playing on varsity sport is tough. All the commitment and workouts. My elder bro was ranked top 50 by ESPNU for football several years ago…he quit the team after redshirting freshman year.</p>
<p>Make sure you really want to play for your school before you ask the coaches…</p>
<p>Thanks! So there are usually no tryouts for varsity sports?</p>
<p>it depends on the school and the sport</p>
<p>Depends on the school and the division too</p>
<p>If you go to bigger, more prominent schools…then yeah, usually no tryouts. If you are looking for Division 1 schools, then the only way for you to get in is to walk-on. Most of the spots are already filled by recruiting. For Division 2, 3, and most CCs, you can do tryouts. Those places normally don’t have enough good players, so they may hold tryouts to get more players.</p>
<p>Can someone describe what walk-ons are? Also, it seems that varsity sports take a huge chunk of time. What if athletes have too much on their plate and decide to quit? Can they drop out (if it’s in something like the swim team) or is it extremely hard to do so?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>before anyone answers please tell us which sport (and your experience) and the types of schools in which you are interested. The answer may be radically different between hoping to tryout for basketball at Kansas and for cross country at Bowdoin, for example … without more info we really can’t help you.</p>
<p>A walk on is a person who is on the varsity team who got there through try-outs and was not offered a scholarship as a recruited high school senior. </p>
<p>There are usually walk-ons in every sport even on DI football teams. Ever seen the movie Rudy? </p>
<p>And yes you can quit anytime you want if you feel like it. But varsity collegiate sports take a huge amount of time.</p>
<p>USC is a D1 school and I know people who walked onto the football team. There’s a guy who my roommate was friends with who did it this past spring.</p>
<p>He had to go through a series of try-outs. I think I heard they started with like 70 something guys and filled something like 6 or 7 spots. It was an incredibly difficult process and he had to work really hard all year long to be able to do it.</p>
<p>One of my dad’s friend’s son walked on to the team a few years ago and I think it was pretty much the same process.</p>
<p>Walking on to a D1 school program is extremely difficult, but not impossible. I also know of a guy who was a walk-on for Furman’s basketball team (D1), and he ended up being a captain his senior year.</p>
<p>I was on walk on track athlete my freshman year at a DII school. I just emailed the coach, told her my times and asked if I could be on the team. It was a pretty big time commitment, especially during the season when we had to travel pretty much every weekend. I would only recommend trying to walk on if you’re really committed to your sport and are okay with the large time commitment and don’t mind that it could take away from you doing other things (such as a job). I decided to quit after freshman year because I found that I didn’t like track as much at the college level and I didn’t really click with most of the people on the team. Hope this helps and hope you’re able to get on you school’s team if that’s what you want.</p>
<p>At my university, athletes aren’t just required to attend all of the athletic stuff, they also have mandatory study tables for a set number of hours per week, and many of them have mandatory tutor sessions on top of that. Not to mention a full course load. </p>
<p>Why are you interested in playing varsity (insert sport here) now, and not during the recruiting period in HS?</p>
<p>My older brother walked-on to his college football team in 2004. He was a walk-on for the Texas Longhorns football team, the year before they won the Natl Championship. He redshirted both his freshman and sophomore years…which is a shame. He left the team after sophomore year to focus on his degree. And now he just graduated from law school this summer.</p>
<p>He had to attend all the meetings, practices, and game trips. He have a private academic tutor, paid for by the program. His times are mostly on the team, and had little time left for academic. You can balance it if you know how, but it is a busy life.</p>