You saw that I was responding to someone else in that post?
Shouldn’t the first assumption for increasing chances of admission to a highly competitive/very selective academic school, whether athletic scholarships are offered or not, be that the student has the academic qualifications for admission to that school?
Why spend years/thousands of hours and thousands of dollars on sports if your goal is admission to a top academic school? SAT/ACT prep is much more likely to pay off.
In my experience it was far more important to expose my children to many sports and non sports activities at a young age rather than try to pick one “most likely” sport. In elementary, I would have predicted dd to have the best shot at playing volleyball in college. We live in a hotbed for the sport and she appeared like she might have the required size and athleticism. The size and athleticism ended up being fine but it was the only varsity sport she quit after freshman year. Just had no passion for it, and if we had pushed her into it early we would have just made her lose interest faster.
So your answer to the question is “not volleyball”?
Academics are assumed, since even recruited athletes to highly competitive academic schools don’t gain admission if they don’t meet the minimum requirements.
Tennis or golf; age 8-10
You need to pick a less popular sport. I know of a girl who got into Columbia with low stats as a recruited squash player. She had been playing since she was young (elementary school) and had become nationally ranked.
“If you could start your child off at a young age in any sport, …” I suggest a sport that is not too expensive so that there are sufficient family resources to pay for the therapy for the child whose parent is forcing him or her into a sport to fulfill some goal of the parent’s, not to promote the best interests of the child.
“If you could start your child off at a young age in any sport, which one would maximize chances to be recruited to a highly competitive academic school (D1) and at what age would you start training?”
The one the child likes and is good at.
You can start her at any sport at 4-6 to find out if she is competitive and into sports period. She will still have time to try a few different sports to find the one she likes. If she picks up dandelions on the soccer field instead of running after the ball then maybe you should look at arts and crafts.
While a girl can have a good chance to benefit from sports in college admissions, boys recruiting is much more competitive so starting a boy in sports with this goal in mind will most probably be a waste of time and money.
Men’s wrestling is not a good choice for scholarship seekers, it has one of the worst ratios for high school athletes making it to the college level, and many of the programs are underfunded.
It’s also a physical and mental grind, more so than most other sports.
However it isn’t a bad choice for admission help. Mostly because it’s a very blue collar sport. The vast majority of D1 caliber athletes don’t have the academics or interest in an ivy league or NESCAC type experience. So if you can reach the right athletic level and you have academic numbers that meet the 25th percentile, it is pretty easy to get coach help.
Also they need a kid who weighs 125#, one at 285#, and everything in-between.
Sailing.
- Doesn't require the athlete to be any particular size. It's intensely physical, but on two person crewed boats like 470s there is a place for a top sailor of any size, just have to balance the size of the other teammate. In the next few years as foiling catamarans become Olympic boats, there will be the need for small helms and large crew or two medium kids teaming up - in other words, size won't prevent your kid from being on a top team.
- Smart kids do well in it since there are elements of physics and hydrology involved.
- Doesn't endanger a kid's brain like sports linked to CTE do. Rare to have overuse injuries or career ending injuries.
- Practice and teamwork are generally enjoyable. Hard work, but also done on the water in gorgeous settings, a lot of socializing on boats, swimming, fun. Makes a difference especially for younger kids if practices are fun.
- % wise, it's much more likely that top sailors are recruited than top players in the more common sports.
- It's a lifelong sport. You can participate and be competitive (although you may have to switch type of boat) until you die.
- For parents, it's the most enjoyable sport for spectators. Instead of spending hours sitting on a boiling hot field waiting for one kid to make contact with a ball just once, you're often sitting on the pool deck of a yacht club or on the grassy slope by the water of a community sailing center.
I don’t think sailing is an official NCAA sport???
I’d go with golf. No subjective kissing up to coaches. Your score or match play record speaks for itself. You don’t have to be a physical freak. A reasonably athletic person can get really good (not PGA/LPGA Tour quality, but high amateur quality) with enough practice and instruction. It’s also something you can do by yourself, and something you can enjoy for life. The issues of course are burn-out (as with any sport) and costs.
According to this podcast, fencing is the one with best chance of getting into TT schools: At the bottom of the link http://freakonomics.com/podcast/sports-ep-3/
As the parent of a former college sailor, size does matter. College teams prefer the combined weight of the sailors to be 300 lbs or less.
Rolling my eyes right out of my head right now… As are all the other parents who are old enough to have seen how this whole sports/ college admissions thing plays out from middle school through high school and college.
I’m thinking very hard to recall who, of the middle school “stars” I’ve known (I have three kids, the youngest is a college senior now), went on to play in college in the same sport in which they were middle school stars.
Not many.
Track, tennis, golf, and interestingly, shooting (target shooting) is what comes to mind.
Other kids who were successfully recruited had barely started playing the sport that took them to college when they were in middle school. The middle school stars ran into burn out, size discrepancies, a disconnect between superb athleticism and very poor academics, changing interests, etc. And, as I said, a lot of kids found other sports to love as they grew into their adult bodies.
My 5’9" boy hit that size early. What made him a lacrosse standout as a 7th grader was his size his speed, and being a lefty. Everyone else caught up and passed him in size, and he realized that what he enjoyed most on the lacrosse field was beating people to the ball and down field. He switched to running early in high school. I never woukd have predicted that when he was in middle school.
If I had tried to guess who would play a sport in college, based on what was going on in middle school, I would have been very, very innacurate.
Anything expensive would be better. Running, for example, takes innate ability and is too objective - the whole world is your competition. How about equestrian?
Thinking about the few kids I know who went on to play/compete at a highly ranked D1 school, and about the even fewer kids from our area who went on to play/compete professionally, they had a few things in common.
They had one or both parents who had played a sport/competed at a D1 college. Their kids had genetics plus extremely knowledgeable parents. Knowledgeable about the politics, the ins and outs of recruiting, the contacts in the sports world. THOSE parents would tell you that if you are just asking those questions in middle school, you are already too late.
But that is a teeny tiny sub group of people.
If one assumes that the applicant meets at least the 25th percentile in academic statistics, the next question is how many slots a coach has for that particular sport with admissions. The more obscure sports may yield less competition for spots on the team, but that doesn’t mean that those coaches have significant sway with admissions. I worked with a nationally ranked runner a few years ago. She was probably in the top 50%, academically, but her admission turned on the coach needing her at that distance. Might she have been admitted without the “slot”… perhaps, but the only reason she got an early read and commitment was because the coach used one of her few slots. Coaches can have more or less influence, depending on the sport and the school.
Coaches of revenue-producing sports tend to have the most influence for the greatest number of applicants, even at academically selective schools. Someone above thread said that as long as the athlete hits the 25th percentile academically, the coach could support the application and, if desired, use a slot for that student. That is true, but most sports don’t have large numbers of slots for a coach to use. There are other levels support a coach can use, such a the “if you admit him/her, I would like them on the team” letter to admissions or “if you are admitted, feel free to come out for the team” letter to applicants. Coaches will also “encourage” applicants to apply early decision, even if they can’t offer a slot or early read. It’s a very complicated process, you have to take what any coach says with a grain of salt, and really depends on the sport, the school, and the NCAA rules for that particular sport.
As the parent of three very bright, adequate but not recruitable student-athletes, I think the key is for kids to do what they love. If, in the end, if it gives them an advantage for college by all means, use it. But just as I hate that every step in a kid’s academic experience now seems to focus on the next step, I hate to think that decisions about what activities a child participates in are made because maybe, someday, if all the cards line up right, it may have an impact on where that child goes to college.
We just let our kids play lots of different sports to see what they enjoyed or did well in. Kid #1 turned out to be an excellent runner and was recruited by DIII schools and even got interest from a couple of DI schools. All three of our kids ran in high school - I think it’s a wonderful sport.