Anything to increase chances for 7th grade child?

[NEMama]

@one1ofeach

@NEMama

For soccer, we are at a DA club but she is not yet at DA age (begins at U14). She is on the pre-DA team but, quite frankly, her plan is to turn down DA and play NPL instead. She knows these 2 schools are a reach and has every intention of playing soccer for her HS should she attend public school. ECNL is not an option for us due to our geographic location. If a private school won’t put her on the team because she chose to play NPL over DA, that’s okay.

(sorry forgot you mentioned she’s in 7th!)

I think you misunderstand me. It is the DA rules that preclude a kid from playing on their high school team, not the other way around. If her plan is to play NPL in order to play for her high school team make sure you mention that in the interview so they are not left wondering if she would be allowed to play high school.

(we chose an ECNL club because of this but it’s my understanding from NPL/DA club teammates that only the extreme stars of a club would be granted a DA waiver to play high school, or rostered late for the DA team)

Also, make sure you really drill down on the 3 sport/activity requirement at most BSs. We were told “oh, other kids make it work. It’s definitely hard but doable.” Mmmmm, not so much. I ended up having to do a bunch of finagling so that my kids wouldn’t have to do double practices every day they needed to go to soccer or basketball practice. When you end up with a list of schools, feel free to PM me about this. It was NOT at all easy. Each family/kid is unique but the student my first (daughter) had talked to was not as serious a student as my daughter so for her to do double practice was less of a big deal because to her homework was less of a big deal. My daughter isn’t slow but she does have a fairly high GPA for her school and that’s because she takes work very seriously.

If your daughter thinks she is going to run track at school and play NPL in the same season (spring) I think that is not doable unless you drop down a solid level academics wise. Just something to keep in mind. IMO that isn’t feasible at Exeter and Andover.

Thanks for the reply. I understand that it’s DA rules that preclude a player from playing HS, but I was responding to where you said earlier that an impact player would be of ECNL caliber. ECNL isn’t an option for us, and DA isn’t of interest, precisely because of the HS issue. I just meant that if being an NPL player means my daughter isn’t considered strong enough for a prep school, then that’s okay too, and she’d probably choose public HS at that point. Playing sports is very important to her. However, it doesn’t sound like that’s necessarily the case (that an NPL player would never be considered “good enough”), so I guess she’ll just see.

Thanks for the insight about the challenges with playing NPL in the spring, running track, and keeping up with studies. Definitely something to consider. She is meticulous with her studies. I suspect she will apply for admission, see if she is indeed admitted, and then make tough choices if offered admission.

As for the community service, our GS troop is definitely not one where parents do the project for their girls, but even so, her other community service has been outside of her silver award project. She really enjoys it, and I’ll encourage her to keep at it.

Thanks for all the helpful insight.