Thanks Midwest and BK for the great insight. All of this is very helpful to us.
The support at D3 schools that we were asking to was really directed at both the team/coach scenario and the student body at large.
For my D specifically, tennis is not a sport that commands a lot of spectators to begin with from the student body. Even in high school, my D’s tennis team took a backseat to the bigger and more popular team sports despite my D’s tennis team having a tremendous amount of team success and also placing at least 1-2 seniors each year for the last 5-6 years onto college varsity teams as recruited or walk-on athletes.
With that said, my D loved being a starters and a leader on the varsity tennis team. My D definitely felt a sense of pride and “prestige” from her high school peers and teachers and enjoyed being able to represent her high school.
If my D had a similar experience with tennis at a D3 school as my D had in high school, then I think my D would view this as a big positive.
Plus it is nice to see that playing a sport at a D3 college requires that a student athlete be organized and focused as midwestmomma stated. As a parent, I think that type of structure is great for a college kids for a myriad of reasons. It is not to say my D should not have fun and party in college. I hope my D enjoys all of the experiences of college life and all that it entails.
Hopefully playing a varsity sport allows my D to balance the best of all worlds in college