Where have you been? Maybe because I’m from New England but lacrosse is taught in every gym class in public schools, or most. The YMCAs have lacrosse teams for young kids, the high schools have teams. City schools don’t always have the fields to play it and football comes first. It’s cheaper than hockey. |
So this kid plays a sport. And an Ivy heavily recruited a prepubescent kid who would not be available for 4 or 5 years. These recruiters are getting more and more anxious about being first to get an athlete in the 1% for their team. What happens if he only takes basic classes, no APs but does well. Or what if he peaked in 8th grade and haven’t improved? Can they take the offer back? |
Or club at an Ivy. The club teams for some sports are incredibly hard to make- filled with kids that had D3 offers and a lot of Internationals. I know many that turned down D3. |
Top 1% go D1, is that true? Seems like even less than that. And nearly all of the kids we’ve seen go D1 or D2 either ride the bench or quit after a year. |
| I like watching hockey more than lacrosse. |
Union was one of the founding members of the NESCAC. Years ago their hockey coach was caught up in a recruiting scandal and before everything was done the school president had to resign. Union left the NESCAC before they were expelled and after a few years reinstated their hockey program as a D1 program. Its a very good D1 program but Union really is more of a NESCAC school and it is unfortunate that it happened. |
| What is an "elite" LAC? Only the top 4 or 5 per US News? Top 13? Top 30? |
I don’t know, I meant the very top athletes who have a future in sports, sports like basketball, baseball, hockey, football. If a student isn’t good enough to play D1 but qualifies academically for an Ivy I would think that’s an easy decision. Go to Ivy. But if a student has average grades and more sports talent than academic talent, D3 is a good choice. |
More academic leeway at the Ivies than in the NESCAC. |
The top 15 or so SLACs have almost identical student profile profiles, the next half dozen or so are right behind them. |
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Some schools give a lot of money for this so they can field a decent team. In others, it may give an admissions edge, though I guess OP is only referring to "mediocre" schools. Not everyone has the stats for the U of Chicago, which doesn't relax standards much, if at all, for athletes.
Not everyone wants to go to a big state U, so if they can get money for continuing to play their sport at a school they would be interested in anyway, they'll do it. And, I suppose others are like the OP describes. |
This NCAA chart is old, but I would guess the percentages aren’t that much different today. https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2015/3/2/estimated-probability-of-competing-in-college-athletics.aspx |
| The revival of this thread is the beautiful marriage of two core DCUM constituencies: parents who resent that sports have any impact on selective colleges admissions and parents who hate LACs (or any others than SWAT). Have a day, guys! |
That chart does not pass the smell test. For one, it doesn't take into account all the foreigners on these rosters. I think it's also probably super misleading and the top 1-5% who go D1 come from a lot of the same feeder hot spots and creme de la creme travel teams. And honestly, who in the hell cares if your kid goes D1 and has to walk-on with no scholarship and/or just rides the bench and has to piss away their college study and free time practicing and traning? It's totally pointless and miserable for the kids. |
It's fun to laugh at the smug Type-A UMC parents who get extorted by and blow eye-popping sums of money on the travel sports racket for a lottery-winning chance to "play at the next level." They're as foolish as working class proles who piss away money on lotto and scatcher tickets every payday. |