This discussion was created from comments split from: Early NLI - for your information.
<p>@twoinanddone, is it timely or way too late to be starting the recruiting process for women’s rowing (possibly LW) this winter/spring for a junior (class of '16)? The coach seems to be signaling that much of the activity will happen after the first of the year, and that is OK, but I worry a bit.</p>
<p>How did you approach the search?</p>
<p>I know I am hijacking a bit here (sorry!), but this isn’t worthy of a full-on thread, is it?</p>
<p>
Hijacking a thread is never OK. I’ve split into a new thread.</p>
<p>You should not worry at all! I would make sure that you have solid SAT scores as well as a competitive 2K before you start reaching out to coaches or putting stats up on be recruited. In general coaches will begin to have discussions with high school juniors in the spring and by the summer you should have a very good feeling as to which schools are viable options.</p>
<p>My daughter’s sport is lacrosse. The four girls from her school who signed (all D1) rowing signed in the fall of their senior year. Rowing wasn’t a sport at our school (in north Florida) but all were members of a rowing club near school. I’m sure their coaches were very helpful. I just know that they all signed during the early signing week - as did my daughter, another lax player, and maybe a male lax player. The lax players signed at home, not at a ceremony at the school, but I think the 4 rowers did sign at school that early week.</p>
<p>I agree that the most important thing to be doing right now for a junior is looking at colleges. Does your daughter want a big D1 OOS flagship, a D2 school for a partial scholarship, an LAC, and Ivy? Is she looking for money (D1) or academic admission help (LAC, D3). Have early SAT or ACT scores, a high school transcript ready to show the coach and admissions office.</p>
<p>Thanks @momof17, it brings me great relief. I see that for some sports, recruiting starts spring of 8th grade, so I felt a bit panicky. Her coach gather all the 11th grade girls together this past week and started the discussion, so maybe they are on it, and I just need to trust 
She took a practice PSAT last year that came in high, so she may be NMSF material. We will get the scores when she returns to school in the new year, I am guessing. I am not sure when she will take her SAT or ACT.</p>
<p>Thanks @twoinanddone. She is looking for admission help to bring “Reach” schools to be closer to being “grasp” schools. I think she will prefer Ivies and MIT/Stanford, though she may feel Stanford crew is above her comfort zone. I am also encouraging her to look at SLACs and Seven Sisters. Her 2Ks will probably be competitive (maybe not, and therein lies the question) by the springtime, especially for LW crew, for which, so far, she makes weight. Will she pull 7:50, 7:40, or better? She is rapidly improving, so who knows? Part of the question is what is a good number?</p>
<p>She is my first Athletic Recruit experience, and at a boarding school, so I am trying to trust and monitor, but would hate to find out after the fact that I was supposed to have been proactive.</p>
<p>Lightweight women’s rowing is sort of tricky. There are very few schools competing (Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Wisconsin, Georgetown, and Bucknell). They are all great schools. It sounds like your daughter is a good student with really good standardized test potential, and that will help a lot. The problem is that the vast majority of girls on the teams are walk-ons with only 1 or 2 true recruits each year (Stanford usually recruits more). Given the limited number of slots available, her 2K should be very close to (or really even lower than 7:30) to get a lot of interest from the coaches. The other issue which you have alluded to is her weight. If she is typically 125 eating all she wants then she is probably fine. If she struggles to get down to 130 just to race I would be very careful about considering rowing lightweight in college. You might even be surprised that she could have more opportunities open weight as there are so many more programs recruiting so many more girls (IVYs for example recruiting 10+ per school).</p>
<p>I also agree that the Women’s colleges and maybe NESCACs are worth looking at!</p>
<p>We just hopefully completed the process- so I can share what we found. It’s not too late-its just beginning. I can say that at this time last year my daughter hadn’t contacted or been contacted by any of the schools she did an OV or UV. The main thing is get everything in order- GPA, ACT and SAT scores or dates, class rank, and erg scores. Come up with a plan as to how you will increase test scores or decrease erg times … Create a berecruited profile ( this didnt help us much, but it did help other girls in our high school)… I think row2k.org has a list of all colleges that offer rowing, and what type ( women v. men, lightweight v. openweight). Go to the college’s athletic website. There is tons of information out their about different schools and their programs. Start filling out recruiting profiles on these sites and follow up with an email. Some coaches replied within a day… Some took a week or two. Their fall seasons are ending so they have more time available for recruiting. We found in the beginning that schools were more interested in the test scores and grades. Erg time was important, but they needed to make sure academics wasn’t an issue first. Get to know and understand the difference between D1 v. D2 v. D3. Also rowing is different in that most schools don’t have a boathouse on campus. Some have on a few miles away where they have to run to practice every morning… Some are 30 minutes away, and they bus. Thats a huge thing when you find out practice is at 5:00 am every morning.</p>
<p>Once July 1 before senior year came about- some of the D1 schools changed their tune. 3 schools in a major conference that had promised her an OV stopped returning emails and phone calls. All 3 had watched her row live, and seemed excited she had an interest. Our only guess is that she suddenly became too short at 5’8" or two slow ( 7:39 erg last spring). 2 of the schools ended up recruiting other girls from our area who were taller but not as fast or decorated. Their loss.</p>
<p>Good luck. It could be exasperating at times. In the end it looks like we got what we wanted from the experience, and that makes it worthwhile.</p>
<p>@jenroypa, thank you. DD is at a boarding school and presumably working with her coach on this. With the 7:39 (I assume open weight division?), did your daughter go for $ at Division !, Ivy boost, NESCAC, or other Div 3? My daughter is really improving over the fall term and has a goal of 7:40 by spring, but may not make it. She is at the edge for lightweight and about 5’9". I know you don’t want to be an expert, and you are just one opinion; but what is your opinion about what she needs to be competitive? She has not even started really looking at schools, but I think she will be wanting to boost chances at an Ivy, or go NESCAC. I hear @momof17 saying >7:30, and of course faster is better, but I hear you saying 7:39 spring of junior year. If your daughter had a slower erg, would that have worked as well (how slow)? Is there any interest in fours, or is the 2K erg the only metric? Thanks!</p>
<p>Im pretty scatter brained, so let me try to answer the questions.
- We ended up bypassing the ivy’s. Initial emails from the coaches made it seem not very likely we would not get a likely letter. But the school she chose offered support, and is a top 5 prestigious school. We are waiting to see if she gets in, as the “rowing team support” doesnt guarantee it. Thankfully we have 2 other schools willing to keep their scholarship offers on the table until she hears.
- The erg scores is a tricky part. Each school is different. While the 2k seems to be standard, they do look at other distances. Recruiting profiles usually ask for all kinds of distances. College coaches usually let you know what they want/need - dont assume they are all the same. My daughter was 7:55 for most of junior year, but it was also her first year erging. So we didnt have a lot of depth to pull from. She pulled 7:39 late in the year. If you are showing improvements, you can detail the progression in your email to coach( ie. my erg time has improved from A to B in the past 2 months, and I hope to be at X by summer.). I think Penn was the only school that came out and said we need sub 7:30 to consider recruiting you. July 1 ( date coaches could call and offer visits) was when we found erg time to be the issue. During junior year discovery- not so much. Another thing that helped was video of her rowing. Some parents had captured video’s at regattas that they sent me, and luckily for me, some of the bigger regattas she raced at last year were live streamed-so we sent out emails to coaching staffs saying “I am racing at Nationals event X lane 3 stroke seat”. See if your coach takes video at practice or regatta for the purpose of recruiting.</p>
<p>3) Dont assume anything when it comes to recruiting process. Does your D’s coach make himself available to parents questions? Whats the school and coach’s history for placing rowers in college? Do you know any recent grads or current senior’s family that you can ask about their experience with the process? If others from the school are willing to share their experience, great. We had 3 different coaches in 3 years. Our current coach has relationships with smaller schools that we had no interest in, but he did talk to coaches on our behalf. But we were left largely to contact schools. In the beginning I had to drag my daughter along- so I wrote the emails for her. I started with a school she was interested in, and one that I knew recruited from our area… Once she started getting responses she warmed up to the process and worked with me. I would do some research and write down some schools for her to check out ( and why I wanted her to check them out). Then it was up to her to fill out their recruiting profile and email the coach. </p>
<p>4) yes to openweight. I know some of the Philadelphia schools have taken high-school lightweights and put them on their openweight roster. In your emails to the coach, include height and weight. They will tell you. At the Head of the Charles I saw some girl rowing for a D1 college in the 7 seat that was smaller than the cox. They said she was strongest on team. </p>
<p>You are definitely not too late!</p>
<p>Many of our club’s 2015 signed/likely letter recruits (stanford, ucla, uva, georgetown, notre dame, cornell, princeton…and more) did not speak to their eventual final school until spring or even summer of their junior year!</p>
<p>Right now concentrate on 2 things grades/standardized tests and Erg score!</p>
<p>As for lightweight/open weight…</p>
<p>So few lightweight schools but actually they have quite a few spots…</p>
<p>Stanford (7/8), radcliffe (4/5), Princeton (4/5) MIT (potentially a lot, if you meet their academics, wisconsin (7/8)</p>
<p>For the top (lwt) schools you must have excellent academics and an erg score in the low 7:40’s by end of junior year and low 7:30’s by end of senior year. Getting faster all the time. Many top Lwts are now pulling in the 7:20’s by late HS.</p>
<p>For Open Weights…</p>
<p>Sub 7:30’s by end of junior year and below 7:20 by end of senior year for top schools. And Much lower for the top recruits at top schools. </p>
<p>Hi, I am one of the Stanford lightweight recruits for the highschool graduating class of 2015. A little bit on my background:
- started rowing in August 2013 (beginning of my junior year)
- had a decent fall season; raced HOCR '13
- trained all winter; Crash B’s ltw event top 15 finish
- spring season: won regional V4, 3rd Stotesbury Jr4, 4th SRAAs V4 (my team does not race ltw boats)</p>
<p>As far as 2k’s go, my first was a 7:55 and by April I was at 7:41.1. It’s really the depth and the amount of hours you spend devoting to volume and conditioning and just getting faster. It’s a mentality; eat, sleep, breathe, every day to get faster, to help your teammates get faster, to help your boat get faster. That is what I did for 10 months; working out on my own before school, having practices after school (lifting/erging/conditioning), eating healthy and having a schedule. I know time management like the back of my hand.</p>
<p>I had never rowed (competitively) before my junior year, so I guess this helped the coach understand where I was coming from. I had played various other sports beforehand so I had a pretty good notion of cardio/strength training which helped a lot with rowing and erging.</p>
<p>Above all, while it is your actual rowing credentials that get you “looked at/noticed” by all these coaches, it is your grades that ultimately get you in. I would not be going to Stanford without my grades and test scores. And between all the training and time spent towards getting faster, thats what I was devoting my time to - STUDYING. It is a very simple equation!</p>
<p>Let me know how else I could help here!</p>