D1 Lax is not a big thing west of the Mississippi for men. When DU won the national championship a few years ago, it was the first time a team from a state that doesn’t touch the Atlantic Ocean had won.
DU, both men’s and women’s teams, are members of the Big East conference for lax. For men, there are now teams in the Big 10, Utah will add a team in 2019. The midwest is growing. PAC12 has women’s teams and a championship, but men’s teams are club. Utah is adding a men’s team in 2019.
@Ohiodad51 My son’s sport is baseball. We are in SoCal, and he has lax friends that were early commits before the rule change, but all to Eastern schools. I am appreciating all the knowledge on this forum. My son is a good student, so I would like him to use his talent for a high academic school, but currently he has been looking at D1.
@scorekeeper1, there are a couple good baseball posters here, so hopefully you can get some helpful info as you go through the process. Best of luck to your son!
PS 6 sophomore commits in a sport that fully funded has what, 11 total scholarships? That’s nuts.
^^Lax used to have 10-15 sophomore recruits with 12 full scholarships for the team. Many coaches divided them evenly among the grades, so each recruiting class split 3 full scholarships with some getting 1/4 scholarships and maybe 2 getting 1/2. Many got books only. As they continue with the the school/sport, they get the money anyone from their class left behind when transferring or quitting. 6 seniors might be splitting their 3 full scholarships.
@twoinanddone, the dilution of D1 athletic scholarships is the reason why a merit scholarship at a D3 may be a better path.
@Ohiodad51 , Title IX is a hell of a drug.
I agree with @twoinanddone as to how equivalency scholarships work in lax. The seniors earn their extra COE support as captains/leaders as well. So there is no real easy path.
It is allowed by NCAA to get a merit scholarships and an athletic one, so it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. Some schools restrict the student to one or the other, but let the student take the bigger scholarship be it athletic, need or merit (athletic and need can’t be combined). D3 merit is not better than D1 merit if the scholarships are equal. Need, of course, if based on the individual situation.
@twoinanddone, agree that a merit scholarship is equal regardless of whether it is D1, D2 or D3. That said, many D3’s can/do provide larger merit scholarships because they have larger endowments to support same. Unless a student athlete is going to pursue a professional athletic career and money being equal, I would encourage one to pick the best academic environment possible.
I think my daughter did pick the best academic environment for HER. The D3 schools offered her merit or need based aid, usually less than half COA and I didn’t have $30 grand per year to pay the other half. All the D3 and D1 schools that wanted her were small, and located in tiny towns. There just wasn’t enough to attract her because the prestige of a school meant absolutely nothing to her. She also gets about $6500/yr for staying in Florida. Might not seem like a lot to you but to us it was a consideration, so if she liked two schools equally, taking the one in Florida was a better move. Luckily for me, the Florida school that offered the most in merit and athletic aid was her first choice academically.
It’s not unheard of to remain in sports after college. I have two brothers who didn’t play professional sports after college but earn their livings through sports. I would think that in many sports, if you want to do something professionally after college (coach high school, coach college) it would be VERY important to pick your college team carefully just because of the contacts you will make during those years. I don’t think high school kids know what they want to do after college so it’s hard to know which team will be the best choice for a post college life.
@twoinanddone, Best academic environment for her is best
@twoinanddone can your daughter please have a chat with my son? He is considering two offers. #1 he absolutely loved, fit in great with the guys, academically an excellent fit, but not well known in our area. He came home from the visit incredibly excited and happy. #2 is a very prestigious and well-known school where I think he may struggle, and he just didn’t have an amazing visit. He admits he’s having trouble with the notion of turning down the prestigious school, even though he knows in his heart the other is the better fit. He even said if he were injured and unable to ever play again, he’d be happier at #1. We, his parents, need to let him own this decision. Finances are not the deciding factor. I am beside myself that he may decline the better fit for the sake of prestige.
If probably helped that the kids at my kids’ high school were more impressed with an ROTC scholarship than NMF. The top scholars went to UF or FSU. Clemson and Alabama impressed them, Navy was the apex, Colby or Smith would have gotten a shrug, and a ‘where’s that?’ More pressure came from my family over the New England LACs but my daughter would have been miserable (and they weren’t paying, so they got no vote). The prestige just isn’t the thing most talked about among her peers. Going to a school that is smaller than the high school seemed a step backward to most of them.
But if he wants/needs the prestige, that’s not a bad decision for him. It is really important for some kids. I’ve known many people in my professional life who think the prestige of their undergrad school is important (and immediately let you know they went to Yale), but I always look at it as ‘hey, we all have the same job’ For my uncle, it was extremely important and he paid full price for my cousins to go to New England LACs.
I’ll say that I wouldn’t have picked my daughter’s school for ME. It’s too small, all STEM, too nerdy.
I went to a D1 women’s lax game this weekend. Entirely different than daughter’s D2 games. Her team is right for her, but it is not big time sports. Her team went to the NCAA tournament last year, and still not the same as a D1 big time game.
^just building on this a bit, because it sometimes gets lost in the minutiae of recruiting talk, but it is important to remember that for all but a very small sliver of kids who may have legitimate professional aspirations the athletic stuff is really just a part of the whole picture in deciding where to go to college.
I used to tell all the kids I coached that everyone of them would end up 29 and retired, meaning that they would spend far more of their lives outside of their sport then in it. I think it is good to remember that.
^I would say that with distance running there is a much larger grey area between retired and professional than with most other sports. D is choosing the better athletic program that is offering less money because the school is the best fit for her academically/socially, and the coaching staff she feels is best positioned to help her reach her her goals beyond collegiate competition. While she never expects to go “pro”, the opportunities to continue to compete are endless.
^I would say that with distance running there is a much larger grey area between retired and professional than with most other sports. D is choosing the better athletic program that is offering less money because the school is the best fit for her academically/socially, and the coaching staff she feels is best positioned to help her reach her her goals beyond collegiate competition. While she never expects to go “pro”, the opportunities to continue to compete are endless.
Professional doesn’t have to mean being paid to play the sport. There are many other ways to stay involved- coaching, marketing, reffing. Even TV announcing. .
Circling back to report that S went with the better fit vs. the more prestigious school. So proud of his process of self-reflection. To refer back to the OP’s question, S had already announced his verbal commitment to Better Fit before Prestigious U came knocking. That’s one reason why I’d advise kids to wait to to tell all but their inner circle until they have 100% certainty.
^Agree 100%. D committed this weekend to the absolute perfect match school. Saying nothing until league championships are done this weekend but I’m picking out apparel for signing day. So proud of her for for the effort invested to select the right school for her. Feels obligated to let her teammates know before she actually signs though…they’ve supported her throughout.
I’m going to cast another vote for the “wait to tell all but inner circle until kid has 100% certainty” party.
I just think it’s wiser to err on the side of caution, as ANYTHING can happen between the verbal and the acceptance. And that anything might even be that the kid changed his/her mind. Heck, we didn’t even tell some in our inner circle the school name until the thing was 100%. Just didn’t feel right to me — but I guess every family finds its own comfort level.
Happy to report that daughter has 100% certainty now. And yes, the letter does contain some language asking recipient to keep things under wraps (not quite those words) until regular ED notification date.
In some sports, coaches request a declaration of commitment on a public forum. The public declaration tells other coaches that the kid is “taken” and to cease active efforts to recruit. The public declaration of commitment also binds the kid more tightly to the school. In wrestling, for example, the Intermat website lists daily commitments and serves this function.