Overview:
Our oldest is going into her HS Sophmore year (Class of 2028). Shes Playing Tier 1 Girls hockey as well as Co-ed High School Varsity.
The Situation:
Recently her teammates have been getting acceptance letters to go to HS Hockey Prep Schools. We did not go the traditional route of college as we were both military (Marines/Air Force) so we are unfamiliar with these places.
Her teammates parents state that scouts came and found their kids and are now on full scholarships. Not a surprise as those girls are as smart as they come and can perfrorm magic on ice. Our daughter is no slouch academically and has proven herself on the ice more than her fair share.
The Reality:
I’m not trying to sound jealous of them, but their situation seems pretty sweet and we are very happy for them. I have been looking up Girls Ice Hockey Prep Schools and have no idea what I am looking at. The kid wants to be a veternarian in the long run, but doesnt want the hockey to just stop when college ends either.
Any ideas on how to find the right Girls Ice Hockey Prep School and I can start to figure this out?
The easiest ways to start are to find a few schools that have girls ice hockey and then see which other schools are on their schedule. For example, Dana Hall and Choate.
I doubt that the BS offers were fully unsolicited unless the coaches also were BS coaches. Which is to say, you’ll need to do some of the legwork here. Reach out to the coaches with some highlight reels. But you’ll also have to do this at schools which genuinely interest your D, with a full understanding of what’s involved in having a compelling application (visits, tours, interviews, test scores, essays, etc.) That is going to be an important part of the process- nobody is going to offer her a free ride without her jumping through all the hoops.
While there is sometimes money for “merit”, most BS financial aid is based on need. It is also often quite generous. So you are probably going to pay something.
This is all to say that the parents who report that this all fell into their laps are probably omitting some key details AND that a talented athlete who is academically driven can do well in BS admissions if you do your part with diligence.
Girls can go directly to college from AAA hockey (is that what you are talking about when you say tier 1)? So, you don’t necessarily need prep school.
Not many also play HS hockey though.
If she wants to pursue prep school, she should start reaching out to coaches. She can also ask her AAA hockey coach for assistance/perspective.
One thing to consider is I find that student athletes that have attended prep schools are very well prepared to balance the academic and athletic demands of college. You daughter can even “re-class” so that she will have more advanced classes before applying.
There are great boarding schools with girls ice hockey that you don’t hear about often on this site. Look at the “Hidden Gems” thread and you will see lots of less familiar names.
You can also look at the rosters of colleges you think she would be likely to attend and see where their players are coming from.
Where are you located? If you are in the Boston area or parts of CT, or RI, you will have great prep day school options if she doesn’t want to board. There may be good day options in other areas as well, but as a lifelong New Englander, these are the schools I am familiar with. There are a lot of great girls hockey programs in NEPSAC that all regularly send girls to play in college. The schools I am most familiar with that have excellent girls hockey are Thayer (alum), Williston (parent), Kent (parent), Dexter Southfield, Milton, Choate (friends of my kids/kids of my friends attend and play at).
As others have said, be open to re-classing and possibly repeating sophomore year. There is also a possibility to do a PG (post-graduate) year after senior year to improve either academics or level of play for target colleges. With a little more info on your location, your daughter’s current grades, her willingness to board, is she looking for a small school or large school, how far are you willing to travel, does she need accomodations for learning differences, etc, we might be able to help you find some target schools to reach out to this fall.
Take a look at the league brackets over a few years to get a sense of the schools’ level of competition.
My kids didn’t apply as athletic recruits so take this with a grain of salt, but if you’re looking for generous financial aid you might want to include in your search some schools with less elite teams but that have large per student endowments and financial aid budgets.
As someone above noted, East Coast boarding schools generally give out financial aid rather than merit aid. But the definition of “family financial need” will differ substantially from one school to another.
One daughter was a pretty good figure skater, and tall and strong, and decided to try hockey. She was on her high school hockey team for one year. She was a bad hockey player, but had fun and got to meet the other players.
The captain of the hockey team was a pretty good student and a very, very good hockey player. She was quite impressive on the ice. She ended up getting a full athletic scholarship to a university that she felt was a good fit for her. Her best friend was one year younger and also a very good hockey player. One year later this friend got a full hockey scholarship and I think it was to the same school that the captain had gone to.
This was all from a normal suburban public high school.
One other issue: A few of the members of the hockey team were not from my daughter’s high school, but instead from a nearby high school that did not have its own hockey team. Apparently this is sometimes allowed.
In terms of becoming a veterinarian, perhaps two things come to mind.
One is that UVM is very good for hockey, and also very good for pre-vet students. They do not have a DVM program, but they do have quite a few students who get their bachelor’s at UVM and then go on to get a DVM somewhere else. They also have a good CREAM program (approximately dairy management) which a student can take over the summer (you have to apply and get accepted, but the criteria for getting accepted to CREAM overlap a great deal with the criteria that are likely to eventually help a student get into a DVM program). I would expect that there are other universities which are also good for both hockey and pre-vet.
The other thing that comes to mind is that becoming a veterinarian is a very long and challenging path. You have to be drawn to it. Students who start on this path may have to put some other things that they love on hold temporarily while they focus on things related to veterinary science and academics and animals.
As with any athletic opportunity, it will also be important for your daughter to connect with the coach(es) at her preferred school options to get a clear picture of what the team culture and coaching philosophy will be. Fit is important, just as approaches to building and maintaining healthy excellence for athletes are important. If playing hockey beyond the high school level is a goal, you will also want to ask direct questions about the connections between the coaching staff and the college/post-secondary counseling office. A team’s record for the past few seasons can give important information, but so too can the quality of their competition. An athlete that plays for a team in a challenging athletic conference will have the opportunity to be seen by college scouts, whether their team has a winning record or not. You will also want to find out whether the school has opportunities for students to get ice time outside of the regular season and whether or not there is an affiliated split season team that athletes regularly play for.
Many prep school coaches attend tournaments and showcases over the summer months to do some scouting (for example, The Chowder Cup, Beantown Classic).
And I will second the recommendation to look at the “hidden gem” schools as well as the big names. I work at a hidden gem and the number one draft pick for the PWHL this year is an alumna of our Girls’ Varsity Ice Hockey program.
I play prep lax at PA, so i can give some insight about the process and what playing entails, including what ive heard from my friends who play male/female hockey. first, pertaining to the partnes statement that their kids were just “offered.” I was a great lacrosse player in public school/at the club level, for all schools that are well regarded academically, you will have to submit an application. how much of a formality this application is difers by the quality of your daughters hockey, and the rigor of the school. i recieved help athletically at every school i applied to, but i still only went 50%. you state that your daughter desires to be a vet, which means she is thinking about her future, thus i presume a nepsac school is going to be the best fit for you, due to their regard and academic prowess. the application process starts in the fall, and you submit applications late winter/early spring. I would definitly reach out to a bunch of coaches at a ton of schools, and then use that to narrow down your list of schools. if everyone wants you, you may need to trim it even further, i would say the sweet spot is 4-8 schools. 4-8 schools garun tees time to formulate quality applications, and form relationships talking on the phone with coaches. as for the level of the compition, at PA (Phillips Academy) we recently sent 3 girls ice hockey players to the u18 world championships in europe, in which the us won gold (heres an article link: The Phillipian - Road to Gold: Three Andover Athletes Bring Home Gold In Ice Hockey U-18 Women’s World Championship). As you can glean from this article, the hockey is serious. private message me with any other questions. i went through this process two years ago, and i did some things right and other things wrong, id love to share what i’ve learned.
This has come up in other threads, but since @mccubbinsjl is posting for the first time on this thread it might be worth repeating. My older daughter just got her DVM earlier this year. She has consistently reported that most of the students in her DVM program were taking on way too much debt.
Being a DVM is a great career if you want to work hard, get to work with animals, deal with a lot of animals that you can help and quite a few that end up dying, and you don’t mind being bit and stepped on occasionally and pooped on frequently, and you are strongly drawn to it, and you have some way to get there without taking on debt.
Being a DVM does not pay well enough to make it reasonable to pay off loans representing anything even close to the cost of getting a DVM.
Generally speaking you should make sure that you have means to pay for four years of university and four more years of a DVM program before you start paying for high school.
There are also hockey prep schools that aren’t in the north east. Culver in Indiana, Shattuck-St. Mary’s in MN (and gee, many Minn schools are known for hockey).
But she certainly has the opportunity to go to college on a hockey scholarship from her current hs and Tier 1 teams. She needs to network with her coaches, go to camps, contact the college coaches where she’d like to play.
Even if she doesn’t play on a college team doesn’t mean hockey stops at hs. My daughter just played on local rink teams in hs (she was awful) but played on the college club team for 7 years (undergrad and grad school), and now she’s been playing on a rink team for a few years.
You can also pull the rosters for any college team she’s interested in attending and see where their players went to hs, or if they played on a club team (sometimes you have to read their profiles to figure that out), if they transferred from another college. Again, look at the midwest as many of those schools are cheaper, are Yellow Ribbon schools where she may get money from her parents being military, and may have vet school affiliations because of the areas they are in (Wisconsin is known for hockey and cows).
Don’t discount club hockey. If they’ll pay her to play hockey, it’s money saved for vet school, but if not, she may be better off with a club team. More flexibility of where she can go and way more time for academics. Colorado State University has a great pre-vet program, a great vet school, and only club hockey.
What are your/her goals? What region are you from? Also when you say Hockey Prep Schools are you talking traditional Prep Boarding/Day Schools or the Hockey Academy model? Two completely different models and hence two completely different conversations. Please clarify.
If boarding or day, re-classing merits strong consideration. Harder to get in in 11th grade and less time to showcase their talents before recruiting season.