@Ohiodad51, I would speculate that in a good football program which produces a number of recruits every year, it’s different than it is in a prep school where a number of non-athlete kids hope to attend an ivy or other highly selective school and the kid who is holding the LL is an athlete (and quite possibly not on a school team.) Kids from strong football programs travel to camps together, etc., and at a level, the whole team takes pride infieldinf x numcer of SEC or PAC12 recruits. words, less about the gender than the normal pattern in that environment.
Personally, if it were a D3, I would say that I had decided to ED at X school. Athletes at a recruitable level know what that is code for.
If it was an Ivy LL, I would tell my CC and coach. If I did my sport outside school, I would presumably be on a team where this was the norm, and I would be comfortable telling them I had a LL. As for classmates, I would expect that if I told a close friend or two, my news would probably leak out. I might ask my CC for counsel as to whether I should stay quiet until the Ivy released ED decisions or if I could say something now.
While the folks on this forum are the parents of athletes and this is the sea in which they swim, there is another sea out there in which the preference given to athletes, particularly at highly selective schools, is a source of great rancor and discontent. I would want to be sensitive to that.
My D’s HS team has zero tolerance for ball-hogging or show boating but her club team is another story. That could also be a factor as I assume @dadof4kids D is in club too.
ETA: Lacrosse coaches think they can fix anything so this behavior is not as deplored as it should be, but I think the smarter coaches will generally move on when they see this sort of stuff.
@gardenstategal, wholeheartedly agree with your last statement. I can’t imagine a world where kids or parents run around shouting “Johnny got a 36 on his ACT and so he’s picking which Ivies to apply to”; that’s the way “Sally who’s an amazing athlete committed to play hopscotch at xyz school” can come across as well. In both cases, humility always wins.
I guess we were just lucky to be at a school and in a club where everyone was happy for kids getting into colleges any way they could, with 36 on the ACT or winning the gold medal. The only thing my daughter was really mad about was that a girl from her club team announced her commitment to the school my daughter was talking to. My daughter wanted to be first! It wouldn’t have mattered if the other girl hadn’t announced, she still would have been first.
The high school I went to is a sports and academic power house, with about 90% going to college and most of those top colleges. Definitely athletic scholarships to Stanford and definitely non-athletes trying to get in too. Does it really matter if the golfer announces he is going to Stanford in Oct while the guy in the physics lab is still waiting for word on his early app and he knows and has always known he must wait until Dec for a decision?
Nope, but it does matter when the “field” includes both candidates and everyone knows that the student-athlete got in because of a roster spot but the other didn’t because they were an ORM at a highly selective school.
My DD was both so it didn’t matter to her as she got into a great school, but she had plenty of classmates who killed themselves academically and got skunked by those schools - they’ll be fine where they ended up, but I think it does send inappropriate messages regarding priorities as very few will make money from their chosen sport.
@twoinanddone I agree that it shouldn’t be a big deal for athletes to announce or say where they have committed. They’re athletes and they’ve spent a fair amount of years doing their sport to get to the level of being recruited so it should be celebrated. It is not ‘rubbing it’ in anyone’s face, it’s a moment of excitement and relief!
At my kids’ HS, both sports and academics are pretty competitive so everyone seems to want to know the buzz as to who is going where, whether it’s for a sport or not.
It’s pretty common with athletes here in So Cal especially football players to post whenever they even get a roster spot offer. I know a junior football athlete announce at least 12 power conference offers over the spring and summer this year! Kind of crazy but not uncommon
But if your daughter had received an athlete spot from Yale, why would it matter that a classmate hadn’t yet been accepted or was never accepted to Yale? Yale’s not going to give the other kid a spot because your child didn’t announce her acceptance. The two aren’t related.
How can it be bad form to answer “Jane is committed to Yale” when someone asks where she’s going to college? If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine too but just answering, or wearing a sweatshirt, or posting it on your FB is not crowing about it. It’s just what’s happening. And the recruit should be a little proud.
And Chembiodad, athletics is a hook just like being URM or legacy. Hooks don’t take away anybody’s spot, they’re filling up what the college wants in their mix of students…
Its just rubbing their nose in it when we elevate athletics over academics - they are students and then they may chose to be varsity athletes as an extracurricular activity.
@CALSmom, yup its only a hook and so I can’t anyone calling out that they got into xyz school because they were a minority, first-gen or a legacy…Our DD and her twin got into all the same schools - was it because they wanted twins or did they want the student-athlete and took both? No idea so all we ever said was that they were fortunate to both be accepted to xyx school - never a word about pre-reads, OV’s, etc.
Chem, Both you and I have kids that are athletes at highly selective schools so there are those athletes that put academics as a priority. They could have chosen to do their sport in an ‘easier’ (academically) school but they didn’t. That says a lot about their priorities and long term goals, so let’s not lump all athletes in the same category.
As for elevating athletics over academics because of the whole ‘announcing’ topic, well that’s our culture. We are a pretty sports obsessed country and it seems to start at a younger age unfortunately.
And lol on your comment “I can’t anyone calling out that they got into xyz school because they were a minority, first-gen or a legacy”. Yes, I hear you! Who wants to say “I got into Harvard because my race is underrepresented!” They didn’t work for that, but the athlete sure worked hard for their spot!
@CALSmom, yes, I do scratch my head when a well qualified student athlete picks a meh school in order to pursue athletics over academics. Its a sad state in our culture as our STEM DD worked just as hard as our student-athlete DD, but she didn’t get a shout-out by the high school like they did for all those that were athletic commitments…
^^That’s too bad about your other D. At my kids’ HS they not only have the Signjng Day for the athletes, they also hold a Scholar Award ceremony acknowledging the seniors who have won merit or other type of scholarships. They even publish a list of all the seniors and what schools attending
Yup, our DD’s HS never announced National Merit Semifinalists/Commended Scholars; they left it up to the BOE to announce in their regular monthly “snooze-fest” meeting - I think it was buried as Item #29 on the agenda…
Our school had ceremonies for signing (and any one at any division could participate even if no $$ was received) and a senior awards night. They were mainly for academic scholarships but also military scholarships, art contests, some prize for a video about a laser and an airplane, Elks club things,local photograph contests and just about anything you can think of - except athletics. The only ones not honored at the senior ceremony were athletes, even if the award was for academics like Academic All American.
I have been following this thread with some interest. My S20 is hoping to be a recruited athlete. I wonder if some of the early announcing boils down to sports where much of the recruiting is done through club teams, as opposed to mainly from high school sports participation. My son plays on a high level travel team in addition to his high school team. Several teammates and boys from other teams have already announced their commitments to high level D1 teams, and they are still first semester sophomores. Often these are announced by the clubs, but also by the Scouting Websites. I find that hearing of these commitments is helpful. When we know, that USC, for example, has already committed a half dozen boys in S20s class, we know that it might not be the best place to target.
^ it does appear to be driven by the travel teams/sports. The phenomenon started with men’s basketball maybe twenty years ago, and was an outgrowth of the sneaker companies various camps/showcases. It then spread to women’s b-ball and now seems to be most prevalent in lax and from what is posted here, soccer. Interestingly, the hype about early commits in basketball has subsided, as the very early commitments have not proven very reliable over time in that sport. Apparently the same thing is not happening in lax, as posters here report that a high degree of freshmen/sophomore commits prove out in that sport.
If you are just starting this process, the NCAA recently passed a rule aimed specifically at lax early recruiting that you should search for. I assume that is your son’s sport, because I can’t imagine there are any other men’s sports at USC with that large of a recruiting class, outside of football.
Really? Wow. I would have thought USC (I assume we are talking Trojans, not Gamecocks) would run the full gamut of varsity sports. Is lax not a big thing in Cali?