Reply to Friend just announced her junior DD has committed to play lax at a top school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Recruiting for girls lacrosse, like pretty much every sport other than football, basketball requires a mountain of stress and effort on the part of kids and parents.  Way more than filling out forms and writing essays.

My kid’s experience would be pretty typical.  She played soccer in college for 4 years.  Starting as a freshman in high school you begin looking generally at types of schools - big, medium, small, urban, rural, and areas of the country.  You need to do some college tours - open to prospective students - so your kid can begin to get a feeling as to what different types of schools can present.  They need to generally start thinking about where their interests lie for a major.  The kids are freshmen in high school and they are looking at colleges and thinking about potential areas of a major.  They don’t want to do it, but decision timing requires them to start the process.

Sophomore year you continue learning about schools and your own academic interests.  Grade pressure is intense as you need to keep options open.  Schools can be helpful in finding non-athletic money but you have to meet the baseline requirements.  Sport wise you need to be doing showcase events to get in front of college coaches from schools you are interested attending.  You are emailing and texting coaches about where you are playing.  You also need to be going to some college games for schools that you are interested in attending.  This shows real interest.

Summer before Junior year and Junior year - intense time.  My kid did 12 college on campus visits.  Set those up.  Work on how you talk to coaches you have never met.  What are good questions to ask?  What are good answers to common questions?  What small talk do you have - you will be with coaches for 4-5 hours, and often then with a few older players who you also need to impress.  These can be overnight visits.  My kid over did the visits, but they were interesting and ultimately helpful.  After 4 or 5 she got pretty good at the process.

It is a very stressful process for kids and parents.  You need to find a program where your kid fits in competitively, at a school where your kid can do well academically while also playing a sport.  That is a difficult combination to find.  Way more than 50 percent of kids coming in as athletes will drop off the teams before their Junior year.

Then - offer time and negotiation and working with financial aid and admission folks.  You hopefully have more than 1 offer but there is lots of pressure to accept quickly (though offers have to stay open).  Coaches want to move on if you are not coming and that will again free up the athletic money that was part of the offer.

So - chances are very good that the kid and the family have been stressing out like crazy for the last 12-24 months.

[/quote]

As others have said, though, it was their choice to take that path. So that is the stress they chose. [/quote]
And so then you choose stress at application time Junior/Senior year with no "hook". Good for you.

But I played college ball and I think the stress from freshman year thing is a joke. Only toxic parents live this way. I played elite club ball and was recruited at tournaments when it finally dawned on me "oh, I guess I could play in college if I wanted to since I'm being contacted." No stress, just fun. And I am tougher than any of you suckers precisely because I played in college.[/quote]

College sports are very different now than a generation ago, out of season training is much more significant.[/quote]

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