HS for smart, sporty boy?
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Anonymous
The 20% non-Catholics at Prep are concentrated among the Asian boarders and the AA day students. For the rest of the school, GP is as Catholic as is Gonzaga. |
Anonymous
I'm pretty sure the last boy to play football, basketball and lacrosse at GP graduated 10+ years ago. Three sport athletes are a rarity. |
Anonymous
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GP is more Catholic than Gonzaga.
Gonzaga has a lot more recruited athletes! |
Anonymous
Who even knows what "recruited" athletes in this context. The NCAA has a formal description of what makes someone a "recruit". That doesn't exist at the high school level. The IAC has one rule relative to recruiting. That is that schools are not supposed to make "first contact." The student has to express some interest first and that can be as simple as a phone call or visiting the school. The bar is very low. Once that "first contact" is made there are no rules. The NCAA at each Division has rules on how often and when contact can be made and by whom. The NCAA has rules against boosters contacting potential recruits. That practice is rampant in the IAC with other parents and friends and even strangers encouraging prospects to make that first contact. There is nothing funnier than the claim from any of these private schools that "We don't recruit". They all do. And the coaches an ADs are there during the admissions process trying to get kids that will help their programs into the school and considered for whatever financial aid that is necessary to seal the deal. Take the boarders and the African Americans out of the mix and Prep is as Catholic as Gonzaga is. |
Anonymous
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"I'm pretty sure the last boy to play football, basketball and lacrosse at GP graduated 10+ years ago. Three sport athletes are a rarity."
Why do you focus on these sports? I think football and lacrosse may be the same season. There are three seasons. I am not going to tell you which sports my son plays, but there are teams for golf, swimming and diving, tennis, baseball, track and field, cross country, rugby, football and lacrosse. i probably have missed some. And yes, boys do play three sports. It makes HS lots of fun. |
Anonymous
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Why do people keep saying to take Asians and Blacks out of the count. Seems like a strange statement since Asians and blacks can be Catholics too. Also there are Latino boarders who are predominantly Catholic. The point is that non-Catholics and boys of every ethnicity are part of the student body.
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Anonymous
| Forgot wrestling! |
Anonymous
Lacrosse is a Spring sport. Football is a Fall sport. Basketball is played during the Winter. The better athletes play these three sports. |
Anonymous
It's just a matter of being more honest in the way you report these things which are to important to some people. A person looking at the 20% number might mis-interpret that if it wasn't made clear that this 20% wasn't WASPs from Bethesda. It's not. It's primarliy Asians and AAs. Of course some Asians and AAs are Catholic. But the 20% of GP students that are not Catholic are concentrated in these two groups. GP isn't Georgetown University. |
Anonymous
Certainly this has been true traditionally. But in certain sports certain independents have gotten the foolish idea that they should start quietly recruiting to model themselves after the Catholic schools in a limited number of high profile sports on the theory that everyone wants to play on a winning team, even if they only play 2 minutes. I think it will backfire terribly for those schools pursuing this path -- I think many have to some extent pursued it -- but it is a matter of degree. Do you recruit one or two "ringers" for a team or do you field an entire starting team of them. The former I can see (but don't like), but the latter to me completely undermines one of the reasons some families elect independent schools -- like OP, they have a kid who wants to play. |
Anonymous
| Look at gonzagas football or basketball team. The classics CYO athlete who just wants to play football hardly gets on the playing field with their level of football recruiting the school has adopted. |
Anonymous
| Seems like G'town Prep is a good option though isn't that where their lax coach knocked someone out in a bar fight last year? |
Anonymous
Actually he was the one that was hit in that incident. He was a remarkable coach who built GP into a national lacrosse power starting with almost nothing. He is gone now. They finally wearied of all the drama. GP isn't normally considered an ""option" as the people who go there know that's where they want to go for many years. They generally aren't considering other schools except maybe for brother Jesuit school, Gonzaga. GP for many decades has served a relatively narrow slice of the DC Catholic community. And tht means they serve the entire range of that sub-market, the smart ones and the dumb ones and the athletic and not-so-athletic. You can be challenged academically or you can float along with not a lot of effort. They might be casting a slightly wider net now because of the huge debt that was run up with the building spree they went on and the cost of maintaining the larger physical plant. The faculty, for many years, has had an out-sized role at Prep. The headmaster, who is totally unqualified for the job he has, is the puppet of the faculty. The place operates on consensus with the faculty having the loudest voice. The Jesuits have largely died off or disappeared. They used to rule the place with an iron hand. Now the few of them that are there are just along for the ride. Parents. even noisy parents, are listened to politely and then disregarded. Unless they are alumni with either a lot of money or they have a lot of alumni friends, then the administration knows the parents will be gone in a year or two or three. This shouldn't really surprise anyone. This is, after all, part of the Catholic Church. The Prep athletic programs have taken a hit lately because a lot of the financial aid money has dried up and Gonzaga is so much less expensive. Long dormant Saint John's has even started to get some kids who might have not considered it a few years ago. GP, in many sports is going from IAC bully to an also-ran. Prep still does offer boys an idyllic four years and life-long close association with the friends they make there. This is one of the groups that really does believe that where you go to high school is more important than where you go to college. They go to Prep, they go to college, and then return to DC to join their high school friends in life-long relationships. |
Anonymous
One of the reasons I don't wany my son to look at Prep and we are Catholic. |
Anonymous
| Gonzaga has a stellar reputation among catholics. GP not so much and more expensive to boot. |