Let’s not forget that Stanford has a $28B endowment, as reported October 2019. It’s hard to believe they needed to cut 11 sports.
Can anyone suggest high school summer wrestling camps? DS would like to wrestle at his prep schools this fall.
Has he wrestled before? Where are you located?
He might want to reach out to the school wrestling coach. At least around here, most of the LPS will go to 1 or more camps as a team.
We live in Southern California. Not a lot of wrestling cultural here although my brother managed it. There are a lot of wrestlers in my family from, you guessed it, Iowa. He has never wrestled before but he is interested and seems to have a good build. Also wants to row crew. He is going to Choate in the Fall. Really hard to in person options that aren’t already full.
You may have better in person options if he is willing to go to the middle of the country. Covid doesn’t seem to exist here, or at least protocols don’t.
I would call and let them know he is a first time wrestler, because most of the camps are going to assume he has some experience. He can still learn a lot, but he needs to find something more basic and not advanced.
Purler could be an interesting option, although you still should call them first. There are 2 brothers, one in KC and one in St Louis. I think they are similar in their approach. They don’t try to teach 20 different things, they focus on a few and REALLY drill down on them. If they think their takedown camp would be appropriate for a new wrestler, that could be a good one. Both my eventual college wrestler and his less intense brother learned how to ride legs there, they spent 2 days on about 5-6 moves. The less intense one was pretty bored, but both of them were really dangerous with legs after that though. That might give him a foundation on a takedown series that would be at a good level for HS.
He could also do one of the more generic camps out there. Team camps tend to be pretty popular, and there will be kids of all levels at something like that, not just experienced kids. It usually isn’t a problem to be a single there, they just put you on a team. My son had more fun at those, because it is a combination of learning technique and also duals so there is competition and more team bonding. I don’t know if you were experienced in wrestling or just your brother, but wrestlers are pretty tribal. I wouldn’t worry too much that he wouldn’t have fun at a team camp, as long as he is trying he will be adopted and “one of us” pretty quickly.
Probably worth an email to Choate’s coach too. He might have good suggestions, or even offer to take your son with his team somewhere this summer.
ETA: Do NOT go to the leg riding camp. If you wrestle you know this, but that is not something a new wrestler should tackle. It’s a great recipe to getting discouraged and quitting. It’s a good tool to have in the toolbox eventually, but not one you start out with.
@dadof4kids 2 yrs late to the topic - trying to get a realistic assessment of S24 chances for getting admission assistance from a wrestling program at a top tier school.
Grades (straight As), class difficulty (almost all APs), and test score (34 ACT) fit the median student profile of top tier schools, but as we know that’s often not enough to get admitted.
Wrestling pedigree - top 8 in state junior year at 220 in the largest class in a top-five wrestling state (only top 6 are all-state); top 5 in nationally recognized tourney; 1st at several local tourneys; conference title; regional title. Will be wrestling 195 next year and 197 in college - only at 220 because our team had a state champ at 195. No placements at national off-season tourneys (Fargo, Super32, etc.).
Trying to get a sense for how much the academic accomplishments may make up for shortcomings on the wrestling resume. Is this enough to reach out to a coach at Williams/Hopkins? Ivies/Duke?
Appreciate any insight from your prior experience with wrestling recruiting.
My S23 is an all-state wrestler who will be wrestling for a high-academic D3 this fall, so we just went through this process. JHU, Chicago, Williams, Wesleyan, and W&L were all on the short list, and would probably make sense for your S24. For some specifics, JHU stated in their communications to us that the “most successful student-athlete candidates are in the top 10% of their class with the highest rigor and SAT/ACT scores in the 1500/34 range”.
From your description, I think you are in good shape.
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Send me a pm, I may be able to give you more insight with more info than you probably want to/should share publicly. I’ve done a few phone calls with CC wrestling recruits, and they have told me it was helpful. Off the top of my head one is at Cornell and another at Williams currently. So at least I’m not steering them wrong. 
Generally:
Your academics are probably good enough for anywhere. If you are that serious about wrestling then you have been around the sport enough to know that the typical wrestler is not really a realistic high academic recruit, or interested in that path even if it were possible. The exception might be that at JHU and especially Chicago I don’t think that coaches have as much pull as they do at most places. But the academics are “good enough” for anywhere. If they want your son as an athlete that won’t be an obstacle.
Your son (and maybe you as a ghost writer, but definitely lurking in the shadows and not initiating the contact) should be reaching out to coaches ASAP. Actually at this time of year, I would get all of my ducks in a row, the emails personalized and ready to send, then hit submit on March 20, or maybe wait a couple days to let them clear the backlog, idk. But either way the week of March 20 I would send a basket of emails to target schools. The coaches will hop right into recruiting as soon as the tourney is over. I’m guessing D3 could go the week before, but honestly those guys are wrestling nerds too and probably glued to a screen all weekend watching D1s.
As you know, if he wants high academic, the list of targets isn’t that long. He should let them know that he is more of a 195/197 than an undersized heavyweight, although willing to do whatever helps the team. A mobile heavyweight is worth his excessive weight in gold, but if you just aren’t big enough then it doesn’t really matter. But depending on his body type, putting on 20 pounds of muscle (which can easily happen in a college weight room) could make him extremely dangerous. Not saying he needs to go that path and to a certain extent it will be dictated by team needs/coach opinions no matter where he goes. But while I think it is important to let them know his true size, it doesn’t hurt to say that just like in HS, he is open to doing whatever he needs to do to help the team.
This was back when ACTs were mandatory, but I had an Ivy coach tell me that if S was a freshman starter, 27 was fine. If he was a developmental guy who may or may not ultimately see the lineup, he probably needed a 34. My son had a teammate on his current Ivy team who was a kind of late recruit who was essentially that kid. He told the coaches that he was their #1 early on, but they didn’t give him an offer until pretty late, probably because they got another stud with iffy academics, and they needed that 34 to balance things out.
On that note, at the Ivies (and I think it is similar but not identical at other high academics) there will be 2 AI numbers the coach has to worry about. An average they need to hit, and a floor. Your son is far from everyone’s floor. It is a bit of luck involved in being the guy brought in to bring up the average, and the wrestling still needs to be at a similar level (the guy I was referencing earlier who got brought in to bring up the average was still a 3x state champ from a average state and had some national acolades). Also I don’t know how test optional may have changed this landscape.
Williams may be a good target. The academics are fine, and I think as far as “life” outcomes, that is a great program. My son and I have kept in touch with their coach a bit, and we both really like and respect him.
I won’t retype it all here, but check out the board for info on what to put in the cover letter and in the resume. I would put the 4.0 34 in the RE line, along with maybe flex 197/275 or something like that. And #5 Iowa State Tourney or #5 Beast of the East or whatever it is.
One mistake we made is we didn’t cc the assistant coaches. I think S’s emails fell through the cracks at a couple of places, because he was getting attention from B1G programs but couldn’t get a couple places where he would be a 4x starter to return an email. All non SEC football sports are like this to a certain extent, but wrestling definitely has coaches wearing many hats and doing many jobs. And in my pretty extensive experience, even at the top levels (looking at you USA Wrestling) wrestling is an unorganized mess run by people who are unorganized messes. So the more people he tries to contact the better the odds of actually having someone read the email.
Like I said, happy to answer a PM or have a phone call. Good luck.
ETA I don’t know the current rules, but bet you can’t send a PM since you are a new member. I will send you one, reply if you are interested. If not, no big deal.
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