All righties here! @arwarw
So for the short 5’2 (in the future!) girl of medium build, which type of sword?
Another rightie niece is 5’6 and about 160 with broad shoulders and strong thighs. Too bad she is a junior and has never held a sword except perhaps at a museum. She is used to fending off her brothers and perhaps a coach would accept that? JK
@SeekingPam,
I was going to recommend rowing as a great sport to start late but unfortunately it sounds like these kids have the wrong body type. The ideal body for crew is either small and light (the coxswain) or tall and strong (the rest of the boat). The two most important metrics coaches look at for rowers are erg time (the rower’s performance on an ergometer measuring how fast they would cover a 2K course) and wingspan (the rower’s arm length, usually the same as their height). A taller rower has a natural advantage so most rowers recruited by the Ivies are 5’9" or over for women and in the 6’2"+ range for men. D3 rowers can be shorter but have to make up for their lack of height with strength and coordination on the water. I wouldn’t recommend coxing for someone who isn’t naturally light because the need to stay slim (as close to 110 for women and 121 for men as possible) can lead to eating issues in college. Rowers also need to be very tough. I always say that crew is the one sport where if at the end of a match-up you’re bleeding and throwing up you know you probably did a good job. Do an image search for “rowing hands” if you want to see what I mean.
The flip side is that there are a lot of spots for college rowers, especially women. It’s a sport that’s becoming more popular but a freshman with any experience whatsoever and good conditioning can in most cases walk onto all but the most competitive teams. My strong 5’7" daughter, who started rowing as a 9th grader, was recruited by multiple D3’s, including NESCACs. A 5’9" friend who started in 8th is now rowing for Brown.
@seekingpam don’t worry about body type. Find the best fencing club near you and see what they have to offer.
Thank you Sue22. Is your daughter doing light or open?
My other niece was listening to the discussion, the 5’6 one who is junior and she was willing to give it a try but I think her summer is already spoken for. Also I think she is just too short for open and too heavy for light, her natural best weight if she was really fit would be around 125-135 so there would be a lot of pressure in terms of weight.
It does seem like height is a natural advantage in so many sports.
@SeekingPam I read that quote about “high need” as referring to the coach’s need to fill that athletic position, not the applicant’s financial profile.
^ Thank you
@SeekingPam, She was an OW rower but in the end opted not to row in college. She’s at a NESCAC with a very strong and intense team and she decided she wanted to concentrate on being a student, so she chose not to follow the recruiting process through to the end.
If your nice likes rowing she should try it. There are shorter rowers, just like there are shorter basketball players and volleyball players. 5’6" isn’t really short. There are some really good one week residential camps, and they welcome all levels, from kids who have been rowing year round for years to kids who have never stepped foot in a shell. If she’s strong and fit, or is willing to get there, that’s half the battle. The camps are a good way to test out interest.
There aren’t many LW rowing teams out there. I believe fewer than a dozen for women. You can tell your nice that one of the great things about rowing is that the girls are strong, not skinny. No one would care if she gained the freshman 15 because it would be likely to all be in muscle! 
Rowing can also be a good lifelong sport.
My kid’s fencing club started everyone on foil. After a few months of foil, the coaches recommended a weapon and they start fencing with that weapon. But the kids did have a choice – I know at least one kid who tried epee for little while, but decided she like foil better and switched back.
@intparent: Of course there is also the case of Susie Scanlan, Princetonian and Olympic Team Bronze medal holder coming out of Ro’s club…also not that tall for an epeeist, btw.
Note that some clubs go the “start with foil” route, but not all. I might even argue that it’s a bit of an old fashioned practice. For younger kids, of course, the foil is lighter than a similarly sized epee…so easier to hold up for a long time. But as we all know, it’s footwork that wins medals! 
She fenced right along with my kid (also an epee fencer) and others – but worked her a** off to get to the level she did, too. I said that a kid with good coaching, athletic skills, and desire can go far – but the blanket statement that club fencers all fence in college made earlier in this thread just isn’t so, even with a great coach (Ro coached that Olympic epee team when Susie win her medal, so I think he qualifies as a good coach – but all his club fencers don’t fence in college).
@intparent maybe you’re referring to my post? Sorry, I did not mean to imply all club fencers fence in college. I simply said:
to support my guess that club fencers (as opposed to HS fencers) have a higher success rate of going on to fence in college.
And just saying that my experience is different – but it may depend on the region of the country or the clubs. I was just making the point that even clubs with top coaches aren’t sending all of even their “core group” to fence for college teams. I would say of the kids who were pretty intensely involved, traveling for competitions, going to nationals, etc, if our club maybe 20% are fencing in college. Maybe it depends on the priority of the coaches, though – our club was not insistent that people compete or progress in competitive level to stay active in the club – maybe there are clubs in higher population areas that put more pressure on their fencers.
To the OP, sorry this has become very fencing-centric! I guess fencing parents can be pretty strong advocates for the sport!
@intparent: We are in NYC-area, based out of a club that you’ve do doubt heard of, and even there, I can’t sense any pressure to compete/get results. And I can see where arwarw’s experience might be very valid (though YMMV, as the kids say). This year, NYC-area club, FAW, had a pretty good placement record for their WE fencers…with I think all who wanted to fence in college getting the opportunity. Could be just a fluke year, but honestly I doubt it.
Perhaps a better question is “Does every kid who wants to fence in college get to?”
I think the OP’s question would be, does every kid who wants to fence in college get recruited and get an admissions tip? And the answer to that is no. And it isn’t even a varsity sport at lots of colleges. What are there, maybe 40 colleges with varsity fencing teams last time I checked? And the kids still need a reasonable academic profile to get into a top college, even as an athletic recruit.
Squash is a good sport to start at 10. Whether or not the child is good it’ll whip them into shape, can be played year round, and can be played into the twilight years. Like tennis you can usually find a court and someone to play with in college. Many of my daughter’s former teammates were recruited to Ivies and NESCACs, but aside from the college angle it’s just a good sport to pick up.
Seeking,
There is some folklore about D3 sports and financial aid. The official D3 line is that coaches have no say in financial aid and there are no athletic scholarships. Yes, you will hear a story here or there, but the recruits in those stories may also have had legitimate financial need. Having gone through this rodeo many times, I will say that every coach I have talked to has stated they have no role in financial aid at all. I believe them, as the consequences of offering a surreptitious athletic scholarship would be grave.
So to answer your question, the Bowdoin article is referring to coach influence in admissions. There is absolutely NO DOUBT that coaches can have a positive impact in admissions. The ultimate decision making, however, is not made by the coach. I mean, for a very select few, coaches may have such influence that we think they made the decision. However, officially admissions decisions are made by the adcom.
So, to return to your initial question . . . What to do with these kids? Let them have fun. Give them an offer. Tell them they can choose one sport – whatever they want – but they have to stick with it for three years. After three years, you should be able to tell whether you are paddling upstream. If it were me, I would encourage the squash, crew, fencing route. I definitely disagree about equestrian not being a contact sport. Once you take multiple spills, and deal with an unruly 1100 pounder, football may seem like bowling by comparison. Collegiate softball players are not made in a few years. Those crazy pitchers practice every single day.
Honestly, we parents need to learn to trust the system. Most of the kids end up in colleges that they love. That should be enough with or without athletics.
I agree with everything @gointhruaphase says above with the exception of how long the kids should have to stay with a sport. A lot of kids would never try a new sport if they were required to stick with it for 3 years. I think a better approach would be to say, “I want you to be physically fit, so you have to do a sport but what sport you do is up to you and if you join a team you need to give your best and finish out the season so as to not let your team down.”
The other thing to consider is that not all kids are competitive athletes and there’s nothing wrong with that. Mediocrity in a sport is not going to help a kid get into college anyway. One of my kids was a participant kind of player in competitive sports-left field in baseball, a passable fencer who was never going to be good and who knew it, put in the soccer goal when no one else wanted to take on the position. He had fun even though these sports were not going to be a factor in his college applications. OTOH he has a great talent in a non-competitive sport. He pursued this sport all through elementary, middle and high school and I’m certain his accomplishments were a factor in his admission to his stretch school even though no one would ever have said “Encourage him to try [his sport] if he wants to go to a competitive college.” College recruiting in this sport doesn’t exist. He’s taught the sport at his college and he’s now fully supporting himself by teaching in a year off from school in another city. He couldn’t be happier. If we had insisted he concentrate on soccer, fencing or baseball he would never have time to discover what he truly loves.
@Sue22 Tennis is the worst sport. It has the least amount of spots and a high rate of college going athletes, as well as an international pool.
In college there are 2-4 spots a year on average for a tennis team. There are 1000 americans going to some college, and there are 300 that have 12+ years experience and academy training to go to top schools in d3. This is for boys.
On the girls side it is a little more lenient but it takes 6+ years to come close, and thats with a good coach.
@SeniorStruggling, did you mean that message for me? I didn’t recommend tennis.
@Sue22 I thought you had, re reading i see you compared it to tennis.
Squash is a good sport.
I would never tell anyone to go into tennis. It’s to competitive and cut throat. With more supply than demand.