Ivy League Recruiting

Ohiodad51
Wed, 07 Oct 2015 14:06:33 +0000

As long as a coach makes a reasonable number of verbal offers during a player’s sophomore and junior year then the recruitment class size can be easily controlled. For women soccer this appears to be one verbal offer for sophomore class and maybe five for the junior year class.

@Swimkidsdad, I think this is the disconnect. The point I was struggling with was the statement that recruiting classes were “completed” by the end of sophomore year. Sure, I can see that a coach will have both a range of slots available and a target AI (within a point or three lets say) two years out. I just do not believe that the coach will have the specificity necessary to fill out his class that early. I have no trouble believing that a very strong student with excellent athletic skills could be offered conditional support by an Ivy as a sophomore. I think this is especially true for girls, since as someone said up the thread the physical development timeline is different than with boys.

If a coach specifies a minimum GPA and test scores as a condition for a verbal offer then the Minimum AI can be maintained.

The overarching point @superdomestique and I were trying to make was that a conditional offer should be viewed as exactly that. Conditional, and not at all settled. Until the kid hits the targets set out, they should not, in my opinion, assume themselves “committed”. Is that a semantic quibble? Maybe. I appreciate the point that an honors student from Country Day is going to do well on the ACT. And yes, if a coach told my kid as a sophomore that he would support him if he kept a 3.5 and scored a 30 on the ACT, I would have privately felt confident he would do so (probably because his mother wold have killed him if he let his grades slip, and football would have thus become less of a concern). But it is not always such an easily surmountable hurdle, and that is the point of urging caution.

The minimum AI for all athletics recruits is based on a 4 year rolling average for that college and is based on the GPA and test scores for all students. This number does not change much year to year and can also be predicted from previous GPA and test scores. If a coach holds one or two slots open for a class to recruit seniors then any minor changes in the AI can be compensated for. The coach can also build a slight cushion in the AI using the 4 year moving average which should be able to compensate for any unforeseen events.

Generally I agree, although I think you will find that over the last several years the AI has been creeping up steadily at most schools, although it fell slightly at a couple two years ago. Again, these changes shouldn’t effect a specific recruit except at the very bottom, where I doubt most lax and soccer players are being recruited, but I would think make it impossible to fill out a class too far in advance of the last part of junior year.