Is playing a sport in college "worth it"?

[Anonymous]

My DD plays soccer and will be going to a public high school next year. She plays at the national level and misses several school days due to this. She is in the MCPS magnet program. If she gets into the magnet program in high school next year, I am not sure if she can balance academics and sports. Parents whose kids have gone to magnet programs, please share your experiences and if your DC was able to handle both.
Other alternative would be to send her to a private school. However I have heard that academics in MCPS magnet schools are at a very high level and not comparable to most private schools. If we choose to send her to private schools with good academics, which ones would you recommend?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD plays soccer and will be going to a public high school next year. She plays at the national level and misses several school days due to this. She is in the MCPS magnet program. If she gets into the magnet program in high school next year, I am not sure if she can balance academics and sports. Parents whose kids have gone to magnet programs, please share your experiences and if your DC was able to handle both.
Other alternative would be to send her to a private school. However I have heard that academics in MCPS magnet schools are at a very high level and not comparable to most private schools. If we choose to send her to private schools with good academics, which ones would you recommend?

If she is a good student I’d recommend Stone Ridge where Katie Ledecky went. The thing about private school is that you get a very good education but there’s not a lot of busy work assigned. Katie was a great student but also had the time and flexibility to train for the Olympics while attending Stone Ridge.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am sure if all those athletes at Johns Hopkins could see this thread, they might need to change their majors from chemical and microbiology engineering/public health(horror) to..... PE education?

Come on - no one at Hopkins even takes the time to go watch the lax team, never mind play on the team and graduate.
Or were you referring to those quidditch matches on the lawn?

You clearly never played a sport. At D3 few players expect a crowd. You don’t expect one and you don’t need it either. You play because it’s healthy, fun and for the friendships. My daughter spent part of this summer with her college lacrosse team traveling overseas. Incredible experience. Sorry no one picked you in dodgeball. Hopefully you will learn to let go.

I did play and I continue to play in my old age even. I was and am athletically talented. I have advanced degrees in engineering and my kids are headed to college now - only playing sports ‘for fun’.
My kids were academically talented enough to get into top schools without needing to play on a sports team . Honestly because of the risk of brain injury from playing sports at a high level I’m happy that they are not continuing with the sports. Had they chose swimming or tennis I’d think differently I’m sure but everyone chose contact sports.
Other parents I know lament the fact that their 20 year old children have the ‘body of a 50 year old’ due to the endless training.

Clubhouse leader for douchiest DCUM post of the week. C’mon people, make him work for it. Oh and the body of a fifty year old comment is too funny. Trying to imagine this fake conversation where they lament the ill health of their athletic kids. Lord you’re a dope.

The trolls on this thread are ridiculous. The number personal attacks on people for expressing their points of view is ridiculous. Normal casual people do not attack and become insulting to this extent unless they are paid to do so.

These ad hominem attacks are coming from paid trolls representing the NCAA which exploits students and profits from them as well. Or perhaps they are coaches who make their careers from selling unachievable dreams to kids.

There is something wrong with coaches who encourage their players to bulk up to 300 pounds and to wear out their bodies lifting thousands of pounds every week. Tell me please what do those kids do with those 300 pound broken bodies after their football careers end?

Stop exploiting these kids, stop making a living selling these kids the big lie that playing on travel teams and playing sports in college will make them happy and successful.

The reason these trolls are so angry and so insulting is because they are running a con. It's a scam! As soon as your kid cycles through they are out recruiting another kid and another family to scam.

To 99.9% of the families out there do you really think playing sports is going to get your kid into Harvard, Hopkins, or Duke? Of course not! These people are trolls who want to profit off of your children's dreams. if your dream is to attend an Ivy they will tell you sports will get you into Harvard. If your dream is the NFL, NBA, or MLB, their program and their coaching will get you there. For a price they will stroke and sell you your dreams.

Normal people do not speak in such insulting personal terms against others who have only given their opinions about a general topic on DCUM. These trolls have gone beyond normal disagreements on this thread. These trolls have a vested financial interest in winning this debate. They won't let it go. They are afraid that some people who would have hired them will not if they stop planning on having their kids play college athletics.

These trolls won't stop because they need to win this debate. Their financial futures depend on the next crop of kids they can exploit.

Weirdo is back. We missed you.

Smart people obviously baffle you. Too many hits to the head??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depend on the sport I guess. My darling niece is a senior playing D1 soccer. I asked her this weekend how things were going. She replied, I hate soccer and I have no life, December can't come soon enough. lol.. My DD did crew for one year, same story....

Do you think she would like it more if she went pro and did college after her career?

There’s no college after you turn ‘pro’, silly.
And ‘pro’ for women’s soccer means earning $18,000 a year and living in someone else’s house with a family out of the goodness of their hearts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD plays soccer and will be going to a public high school next year. She plays at the national level and misses several school days due to this. She is in the MCPS magnet program. If she gets into the magnet program in high school next year, I am not sure if she can balance academics and sports. Parents whose kids have gone to magnet programs, please share your experiences and if your DC was able to handle both.
Other alternative would be to send her to a private school. However I have heard that academics in MCPS magnet schools are at a very high level and not comparable to most private schools. If we choose to send her to private schools with good academics, which ones would you recommend?

My DS plays baseball and we moved him to Georgetown prep. He was in the Roberto Clemente magnet. Have to say the academics at Prep are not at the same level as magnet. Kids do have much less homework (my older DD is a sophomore in a magnet program), they are able to focus on sports. If your DS wants to be a sports recruit, that would be a good choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD plays soccer and will be going to a public high school next year. She plays at the national level and misses several school days due to this. She is in the MCPS magnet program. If she gets into the magnet program in high school next year, I am not sure if she can balance academics and sports. Parents whose kids have gone to magnet programs, please share your experiences and if your DC was able to handle both.
Other alternative would be to send her to a private school. However I have heard that academics in MCPS magnet schools are at a very high level and not comparable to most private schools. If we choose to send her to private schools with good academics, which ones would you recommend?

I would send her to Good Counsel.

They have the best soccer with 2 girls on the National team and 1 who graduated Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Congratulations (sincerely) to those of you with All-American caliber children! To the rest of us who have average and high achieving children we too will survive and even thrive.

Only elite athletes are accepted into elite programs. Several recent posts have again returned to talking about schools and programs that will send your children to the Olympics or elite university programs. There are thousands of students in this region alone playing high school sports. If your child does not have the natural athletic prowess to be an All-American you can not possibly buy enough private lessons or sports camps to make them marketable to elite college program.

If you love the sport and want to improve their athletic skills for personal enrichment that's wonderful. However, if you are spending your money and your child's time hoping for acceptance into elite universities you will be terribly disappointted.

Those schools are constantly recruiting and those spots were reserved for elite athletes a long long time ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations (sincerely) to those of you with All-American caliber children! To the rest of us who have average and high achieving children we too will survive and even thrive.

Only elite athletes are accepted into elite programs. Several recent posts have again returned to talking about schools and programs that will send your children to the Olympics or elite university programs. There are thousands of students in this region alone playing high school sports. If your child does not have the natural athletic prowess to be an All-American you can not possibly buy enough private lessons or sports camps to make them marketable to elite college program.

If you love the sport and want to improve their athletic skills for personal enrichment that's wonderful. However, if you are spending your money and your child's time hoping for acceptance into elite universities you will be terribly disappointted.

Those schools are constantly recruiting and those spots were reserved for elite athletes a long long time ago.

Blog Dummy? Is that you? It seems loopy enough to be you, though you’ve managed to compress your rants into actual paragraphs so nice work. Last sentence is my fave. Complete insanity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations (sincerely) to those of you with All-American caliber children! To the rest of us who have average and high achieving children we too will survive and even thrive.

Only elite athletes are accepted into elite programs. Several recent posts have again returned to talking about schools and programs that will send your children to the Olympics or elite university programs. There are thousands of students in this region alone playing high school sports. If your child does not have the natural athletic prowess to be an All-American you can not possibly buy enough private lessons or sports camps to make them marketable to elite college program.

If you love the sport and want to improve their athletic skills for personal enrichment that's wonderful. However, if you are spending your money and your child's time hoping for acceptance into elite universities you will be terribly disappointted.

Those schools are constantly recruiting and those spots were reserved for elite athletes a long long time ago.

Blog Dummy? Is that you? It seems loopy enough to be you, though you’ve managed to compress your rants into actual paragraphs so nice work. Last sentence is my fave. Complete insanity.

For the laugh, how many years ahead are spots reserved?

[Anonymous]

These ad hominem attacks are coming from paid trolls representing the NCAA which exploits students and profits from them as well.

Do you seriously think the NCAA cares about what people say and think on DCUM?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depend on the sport I guess. My darling niece is a senior playing D1 soccer. I asked her this weekend how things were going. She replied, I hate soccer and I have no life, December can't come soon enough. lol.. My DD did crew for one year, same story....

Do you think she would like it more if she went pro and did college after her career?

There’s no college after you turn ‘pro’, silly.
And ‘pro’ for women’s soccer means earning $18,000 a year and living in someone else’s house with a family out of the goodness of their hearts.

DP, but of course you can go to college after you turn pro. You can't play a varsity sport there or get an athletic scholarship, but many people do get their college or graduate degrees after they retire from their pro career.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD plays soccer and will be going to a public high school next year. She plays at the national level and misses several school days due to this. She is in the MCPS magnet program. If she gets into the magnet program in high school next year, I am not sure if she can balance academics and sports. Parents whose kids have gone to magnet programs, please share your experiences and if your DC was able to handle both.
Other alternative would be to send her to a private school. However I have heard that academics in MCPS magnet schools are at a very high level and not comparable to most private schools. If we choose to send her to private schools with good academics, which ones would you recommend?

When you say "plays at the national level," you mean she is a youth national team regular? If so, and she continues on that path, I think it will get increasingly difficult to balance with magnet school level of academics. Unlike ECNL or the DA, where you will only miss a few days here or there, with the ynt, you can miss a week or more of school at a time, multiple times a year. We have a friend whose kid has missed between 3 and 6 weeks of school a year since 8th grade for national team camps/trips, and making up the work at a regular, non-magnet high school has been hard. It would be much harder with the amount of homework and difficulty of classwork I assume you'd miss at a magnet. I recommend you get in touch with the principal of the magnet HS to discuss the issue. Some principals and teachers are fine so long as a kid makes up the work, and others are not. In terms of private schools, in addition to those mentioned by others, there are two current national team players at St. John's in DC.

This is the sort of situation where it would be nice to have a crystal ball. If your child continues to play at the ynt level and continues to excel at school, she will be able to have her pick of top colleges regardless of whether she attends the magnet. She'll also have great options if she is "merely" a star on an ECNL or DA team. As mentioned on this thread though, in many cases you cannot easily pursue an engineering or lab science type major if you are playing at a D1 college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depend on the sport I guess. My darling niece is a senior playing D1 soccer. I asked her this weekend how things were going. She replied, I hate soccer and I have no life, December can't come soon enough. lol.. My DD did crew for one year, same story....

Do you think she would like it more if she went pro and did college after her career?

There’s no college after you turn ‘pro’, silly.
And ‘pro’ for women’s soccer means earning $18,000 a year and living in someone else’s house with a family out of the goodness of their hearts.

you mean there are no college sports after you turn pro.

colleges don't bar you from attending and being a student in your mid/late twenties

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations (sincerely) to those of you with All-American caliber children! To the rest of us who have average and high achieving children we too will survive and even thrive.

Only elite athletes are accepted into elite programs. Several recent posts have again returned to talking about schools and programs that will send your children to the Olympics or elite university programs. There are thousands of students in this region alone playing high school sports. If your child does not have the natural athletic prowess to be an All-American you can not possibly buy enough private lessons or sports camps to make them marketable to elite college program.

If you love the sport and want to improve their athletic skills for personal enrichment that's wonderful. However, if you are spending your money and your child's time hoping for acceptance into elite universities you will be terribly disappointted.

Those schools are constantly recruiting and those spots were reserved for elite athletes a long long time ago.

If you ever get to the point where you are hoping or we wondering if you'll get one of those coveted spots on an elite college lacrosse you can forget it, because its already gone.

[Anonymous]

Playing soccer at the jhu/williams is not high level and very easy to obtain if you are a bench player on an academy team with decent grades.

we are an below average asian family of poor genetics when it comes to athleticism and have had two in our family play at top 10 lac's for soccer.

the soccer pool at the strong academic d3 schools is really bad from a technical standpoint. If you are focused on being in the best aerobic shape possibly and you have a modicum of skill, you can make it.

I am 10 years older than my siblings and when I found out how large the hook was for being recruited, we devised a plan for my younger siblings so that they became the best athletes they could be.

At the d3 level for soccer, i believe the average american could play at that level if they focused on training from ages 9-17 on that specific goal.

pretty much any race is more athletically inclined than mine, so if we can do it - your average umc white family can do it. you guys have better athletic genetics and richer resources for training.

but it does require focus and dedication if you aren't athletically blessed. we used it only as a hook to get in. both people in my family quit after one season.