Lakeside School

Whenever I ponder how drastically college athletic recruiting has changed over the last two decades of my career, I think of a story a father shared with me a few years ago. His son was a star soccer player at the club level, and like many of these top athletes, aspired to play at a Division I college.

“He should think about specializing — becoming a year-round soccer player,” his coach advised dad and son. “Students being recruited at the highest levels hone their skills even in the off-season. They compete in soccer tournaments around the country and spend summers at development camps and showcases. They live and breathe the sport.” The father voiced concern about precluding his son from pursuing other passions, including baseball. The coach didn’t budge: “If Division I soccer is the goal, that’s the path I recommend.” 

But the dad was still puzzled how his son could be ready to commit to a single sport, and in a moment of complete confoundedness, blurted, “But for goodness' sakes, the kid’s only nine years old!”

Most independent schools, including Lakeside, encourage students to live balanced, healthy lives, which includes playing more than one sport if they have an interest. But unfortunately, scenarios like the one above play out frequently these days.

Today’s athletic recruiting landscape is intense and more nuanced. Student-athletes and their families need to be aware of pressures and pitfalls as well as opportunities. What follows are tips to help families make informed college decisions in their students’ best interests. 

An earlier timetable

When I first started in the field 20+ years ago, college recruiting was mostly active over the second half of junior year and into senior year. Over the course of the 11th-grade spring, students were bombarded by mail from college coaches, and then over the ensuing eight or nine months, coaches meticulously narrowed the potential recruits from a couple of hundred down to a handful or two. 

College counselors across the country have watched that timeline “accelerate” (a term admissions professionals use to mean the recruiting process starts at younger ages). Today, in sports such as lacrosse, women’s volleyball, and soccer, rising juniors find themselves the objects of college coaches’ interest and intrigue the summer before 11th grade. 

If you’re wondering whether your rising junior has the maturity and context only halfway through Upper School to choose a college, you’ve joined the ranks of every independent school college counselor across the country. 

What’s the goal, what’s the cost?

Before even embarking on the athletic recruiting journey, parents might start by asking those basic questions. If your student finds herself being nudged by a coach toward specializing early on, parents and guardians should ask themselves whether their child has the maturity to make that decision; what the consequences might be of truncating chances to explore other interests; and psychological repercussions if they pour their hearts and souls into a sport and are ultimately not the top pick of a college coach? 

If you’re going for it, play smart

For prospective college athletes and their families going down the recruiting road, here are a few pointers and tidbits: 

• The recruiting timelines vary from sport to sport. While lacrosse, women’s volleyball, and soccer have very accelerated timelines, other sports, such as basketball, crew, and football, still adhere to a more traditional cycle that occurs throughout the latter half of grade 11 and into grade 12. Thus, if a student is eyeing the possibility of playing a college sport, he or she should speak with their coach to learn what timeline that particular sport follows. In some cases, the coach will ask one of the college counselors to provide some early guidance for students who might be recruited prior to the start of the college counseling process in January of the junior year. If a student is being contacted by Division 1 coaches prior to the January of their 11th-grade year, they can also reach out directly to me. 
   
• For the sports that do follow accelerated timelines, it is typically only the top collegiate Division 1 teams in that sport that determine their rosters so early. Students who aren’t committed to one of the top programs early in the cycle might find themselves being vetted by a middle-of-the-road Division I program, or even a top Division III program, in the latter half of 11th grade and 12th grade. 
   
• What differentiates Division I and Division III isn’t always the caliber of athlete. For example, many of the athletes who play in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which includes colleges such as Amherst, Bowdoin, Colby, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams, are stronger than those at many Division I schools. The divisions are simply regulated differently, and for students, this usually means that the commitment at the Division I level is much more substantial than that at the Division III level. In fact, for multisport athletes, Division III colleges offer them a great opportunity to pursue all the sports they love rather than having to focus on only one. And most Division III schools follow the traditional recruiting timeline that transpires over the second part of 11th and into 12th grades. In the sports with accelerated timelines, they will be recruiting at the same time as their Division I counterparts, but they won’t solidify their rosters until much later.
   
• Even if the student doesn’t play the sport year-round for which he is being recruited, most recruited athletes are pursuing their sport in some context outside of Lakeside. These contexts can range from club teams to summer development camps and showcases. Students should speak with their coaches about which opportunities outside of Lakeside will help them hone the necessary skills to be potential recruits and that will provide them with chances to be observed by college coaches. 
   
• Keep in mind that athletic scholarships are not plentiful, and even when they are offered, they are usually dispersed in smaller amounts. In most cases, college coaches are allotted a small sum to be distributed among the entire team. Thus, when students receive athletic scholarships at Division I or II schools (Division III is prohibited from awarding athletic scholarships), the award typically ranges from $2,000 to $10,000, which covers only a small percentage of all expenses at private universities. In fact, families often discover that the amount of money that they spend on club sports, camps, and showcases far exceeds the scholarship amounts that their students receive. Therefore, while being an athletic recruit can help students gain admission to schools to which they might have otherwise been denied, families should be cautious about expecting that their students’ athletic prowess will significantly reduce the cost of postsecondary education.
   
• It is crucial that students and families remember that admission offices render admission offers, not coaches. In many cases, coaches can offer input into an admission decision, and in some, they can have substantial sway, but in the end, the choice rests in the hands of admission officers, no matter what the coach promises. As part of the vetting process, coaches will ask admission offices to pre-screen their prospective athletes’ academic credentials (transcripts and standardized test scores), and admission officers may give the coach the “green light” that the student is likely to be admitted. But this is only a likelihood of admission. Until students have in their possession a letter from an admissions office, nothing is a done deal. Dips in grades after admission officers have pre-screened the athlete or other factors that might appear in the full application might prompt an admission office to renege on its earlier assessment.
   
• Finally, carefully vet any recruiting consultants that might approach you. First, in most cases, these consultants simply do the work that the student should be doing: reaching out to coaches. Part of the recruiting process for athletes is building rapport with coaches and demonstrating their initiative and independence, so it’s important that students take this preliminary step. If a family chooses to hire a consultant, make sure they have the requisite experience as a former collegiate coach at multiple institutions across different athletic conferences. 

The final word (it’s "college") 

Ultimately, students and their families should remember that the ultimate objective in attending college is to receive a quality education. Thus, as students research whether they are good fits for schools’ athletic teams, they should also be asking whether those schools will offer them the type of education for which they are hoping. 

For the majority of collegiate athletes, their athletic careers will end at their college graduations. But their college educations will go with them for the rest of their lives.

Interested in learning more about athletic recruiting? Visit the college counseling resources page, watch the video by Associate Director of College Counseling Frances Nan, and peruse our dozens of frequently asked questions in the FAQ tab.