Just a sometimes-befuddled soccer mom, but I’m puzzled that people might assume that D3 teams might compete at a glorified high school level. When my kid was going through the recruiting process, we looked at rosters at schools of interest (NESCAC, Centennial, NCAC, Liberty League) where many players had been all-state, on state and regional championship club teams etc. These were clearly the best of the high school players, not just your average strong but not exceptional player.
In lacrosse, even at some of the top academic schools, the level of play is pretty low. They may have two or three kids who were pretty good on their high school teams, but those two can’t carry a whole team and the team needs a decent goalie. There are 250+ D3 teams and about 120 D2 teams in women’s lax. At least half of those are not good (being kind), and some are just plain awful. D has played teams that her high school team could have easily beaten.
^yeah, I suspect this might vary by sport and region. There are plenty of D3 XC teams that would lose to the best HS teams, more so on the girls than boys side. Even in the nescac, which I agree is a strong D3 running conference, I wouldn’t be surprised if the top 5-6 girls NXN teams could be competitive. But that’s not a slight on nescac, as many of those girls are already running at a very high level and in programs that demand a level of training and commitment similar to many college programs. And they are outliers compared to most HS programs. The nice thing about distance running is that recruits can easily check results from the various conferences and determine fit.
@BriskJogger it would be helpful to us posters to know what event(s) you do. That does make a difference in your experience in terms of training. If you’re distance, your training will be quite different than a sprinter or a field event athlete. I’m sure you’ve done your homework in regards to looking at competitive times and marks. I’ve posted links for last year’s results to both conferences for fun:
http://www.nescac.com/sports/track/2016-17/championship/winners
https://m.tfrrs.org/results/51545
Have you looked at your interested schools’ roster and team schedule to get a feel? You should also look at what the athletes are majoring in; that gives you a good idea if your intended major is doable. Some Ivy teams are deep and they split teams into an A and B squad. But typically they only travel around the New England area by bus. My takeaway from my son’s first year experience is that if you are in a highly competitive HS for academics and your sport, the transition to either D1 Ivy or D3 NESCAC will be manageable. Good luck!!
@gointhruaphase Indeed it does happen on occasion:
Amherst beat Dartmouth: http://www.dartmouthsports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=210054732
Wesleyan beat Yale (though lost the other 2 games played vs. the Bulldogs over the past 18 months): http://www.nhregister.com/colleges/article/Wesleyan-Yale-celebrate-150th-anniversary-of-1st-11341966.php
I also believe that the top HS baseball teams would beat all but the best D3 teams. The top HS teams in Texas, FLA, GA,CA, to name just a few, are populated by many players that are going to top 25 D1 schools, or being drafted straight into the pros. Most D3 programs simply don’t have the athleticism to deal with them. I would even argue that many of the cellar dweller D1 programs would be challenged.
One has to only look at Hunter Greene(throws 102 mph) to get an idea of what sort of talent is available on the elite HS BB teams.
Today I was watching a show on the history of the Little League World Series today and some of the great baseball players who were there when they were 12 years old, sometimes 2 major leaguers who played on the same team. There are some really talented young kids and there are some coaches who can get a lot out of a small group of players.
Matthew Stafford and Clayton Kershaw played on the same teams since they were 6 years old.
I’m not sure how “How does the experience of running Ivy League track compare to NESCAC?” is answered by high school baseball statistics.
@BriskJogger, the questions you ask in your OP would be great to pose to coaches. They won’t be offended; coaches like to know that prospectives are making thoughtful decisions.
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^Agree that the discussion of sports other than track and field seems of little value to OP’s question.
In the spirit of helping prospective track athletes comparison shop, I will point out that the disparity between NESCAC and Ivy track performances is pronounced. If you compared the Ivy League to the SEC you would see a similar disparity just skewed the other way. Good athletes at all levels but the levels are different and easy to measure. See https://tfrrs.org/
Back to an earlier post, prospective athletes need to ask themselves the big fish, small pond & vice versa question as they evaluate schools. I know a kid who desperately wanted to run DI, ended up at Colgate, and now is unhappy that his squad is not competitive. I know another kid who runs at a top NESCAC and, while he is having a great experience, shares his disappointment that the coach allows enough non-competitive runners to join the squad that it waters down his sense of personal achievement.
@Startingblock good points. My S would have loved to go PAC-12 but his marks weren’t there. His best D1 option was Ivy League…still very competitive but better fit for his range. Looking at NESCAC 2017 championships results, my S would have scored 3rd in the 400m final and that’s not even close to his event he specializes in. His HS squad would’ve beat the conference 1st place time in the 4x100 by a second.
^ I agree with the gap between p5, Ivy, nescac. Ivy xc teams can be pretty good nationally on occasion. Still, it’s a big leap to programs like Syracuse, Colorado, Stanford, and even Portland. For example, with the tumult surrounding the departure of asst coach Wales-Dinan from Harvard, it looks like Judy Pendergast has transferred to Oregon and Courtney Smith to Stanford. Both are strong runners and will contribute xc points to those programs. But they were bigger fish in the Ivy pond.
It would seem to me that an athlete who signs up for a team and then finds out it is “not competitive” or that
the coach “allows” others to participate too and thereby “waters down the team” needs to learn a lesson in
what it means to be on a team, commit to the coach, get along with others and do his/her best nonetheless.
It is what being on a team is ALL ABOUT. The sooner he/she learns this aspect of life the better.
Go 'gate!
Coaches don’t reciprocate that commitment. They change schools, they find a new favorite, they exaggerate what they are offering.
The power isn’t even.
Not necessarily so. As with most things in life, the details matter. If you go to a school with a healthy respect for academics and athletics, where excellence in the former is the guiding principle, recruited athletes generally will have stability and support whatever happens to any particular coach. The rest is up to them including meeting and exceeding their own personal goals, those of the team, the coach and the athletic department. Applicants hold the power as long as they maintain their perspectives on these matters. Coaches do not.
I believe we all want for this to be the case for everyone and so I would advise applicants to be honest with themselves about their selections, their chances for admission with/without their athletic hooks, and their expectations and capabilities when they meet coaches and assess alternative programs. There’s a lot of information online and through campus visits so no one needs accept anything presented as fact and at face value. Once your are there hit the road running. Just like you will after graduation in the real world.
Otherwise why bother?! Quality in / quality out. It’s a precious 4 years and only the very few will turn pro. it’s solely the outcomes for our graduates that matter including making the most of their academic and athletics experience.
Go 'gate!
@markham wrote, “recruited athletes will have stability and support whatever happens to any particular coach.”
This sure did not appear to be the case with the Harvard women’s cross country team. The coach eventually left, but the collegiate running careers of numerous runners were cut short. Not sure that it is so simple for a 17 year old athlete to “go to a school with a healthy respect for academics and athletics, where excellence in the former is the guiding principal…etc etc…” when the kid and family are trying to balance cost, distance, academic and athletic goals all at the same time. Coaches are trying to perform, keep their jobs and make bonuses. Perhaps if colleges were transparent with such things, kids could more easily match with the program that fits them best, but as @twoinanddone suggests, it is not always an even playing field when kids and their parents are navigating the athletic recruitment process.
I would suggest there are two different levels of athlete between the Ivies and NESCAC. In general…
Ivy students are very good athletes: the star of their high school team who wouldn’t make a national championship squad in their sport but are enough to play D1 in the middle of the pack. They turn their skills and a reasonably strong record of academics into an opportunity at the most selective group of schools in the country. A few of them in individual or very specific sports (ie Princeton Crew and Field Hockey) are thinking about the Olympics, and even a smaller group thinks they can get an education and then turn pro.
The NESCAC kids are the starters from High School. They are probably slightly better students but lack the stardom to attend an Ivy. They turn their good athletic skills into an opportunity to attend a very selective LAC. They realize they aren’t going to play their sport professionally, and are going to play in college and move on. If they don’t like the coach, or school gets too tough, they’ll quit the team if they aren’t playing. When they do, the other kids on the team are often jealous.
Totally my take on an unscientific, opinionated perspective…
Your two posts, #31 and #33, contradict each other. You say the coach is in charge and the athlete should be’ for’ the team, even if the coach waters down the team. Then you say the athlete has the power and the coach doesn’t have any power.
Some high school teams are ‘no cut’ and that’s fine if the school either has the resources to give every athlete the best coaching, the correct number of reps, the individual attention from coaches, film time, trainer time OR the school accepts that the team will probably not be as competitive because it is spreading its resources thin. Most schools don’t have endless resources. For rec league to the pros, if one player gets a rep or runs a drill, some other player isn’t getting that chance. If a goalie gets to defend against the top players, another goalie is getting an easier group shooting against him. If a swim team has 100 swimmers, everyone is going to get less time in the pool. Only so many basketballs can be on the court at a time so it just isn’t practical to have 50 players at a practice.
Not every player is a ‘Rudy’ who just wants to be a part of the team, who doesn’t care if he/she ever gets into a game, who is willing to be a tackling dummy just to be part of the team. Most want to play (as Rudy decided he did). Most want to start. How many are ‘watering down’ the team? How does the coach keep a few around to make practices better?
The student-athlete has the power to assess the team, join it, do his/her best, contribute to the team and take advantage of what the school has to offer. Unless the coach quits or is terminated during the season there is always support from the Athletic Department. Of course, if others quit for whatever reason everyone suffers but the point is that the coach is not the team. And whenever a coach leaves or retires - and for that matter when students graduate or leave- there will always be continuity in the program. That’s what the athletic department goal is - or should be anyway- and it should substantiate it formally.
Take a look at what Colgate does, a LAC with 25 varsity teams, and a storied past in athletics, on the documentation side to establish what it does for athletes.
The Colgate Student Handbook covers how a well managed program delivers stability to those who join our D1 teams.
http://gocolgateraiders.com/documents/2016/8/12/SA_Handbook_2016_2017_1_.pdf
The Staff Directory shows the senior level support available to athletes starting with the president himself and the 7 staff who deal with student support including academic support, above the Compliance level.
http://gocolgateraiders.com/sports/2015/10/16/GEN_1016150633.aspx
I would encourage any prospective student-athlete to seek out such resource availability and balance in any school’s website before making recruiting visits so that they know what questions to ask of the coach, possible team mates and others in Admissions and on campus. That includes how long the coaches have been there, what awards and distinctions were earned, what goals they have been tasked with, what training services are available, and what the team atmosphere is like. You want to be well looked after and the commitment should be there by the school to do so.
Here’s another test: There seems to be a clear distinction as to whether certain schools view student-athletes as students or athletes in terms of how they are treated, where they live, what they eat, how much time they have for academics. Why some schools even prescribe what courses they take in and out of season. More like a machine, not a university to me, and that’s surely not for everyone. And it’s not a matter of D1 or D111 either since there are wide variations within D1 itself and even within the same school by "first tier’ and “the rest” sports. But if you join up there you only have yourself to credit or blame for the consequences, right?
I don’t know why people like to simplify life into zero-sum game ie simplistic scenarios and/or apply some story they heard about some college somewhere- as if it will matter to them. It is up to the applicant to choose carefully a program at the level that suits him/her, make the appropriate commitment to the coach and team, reassess, lead and/or just participate. Not everyone can or will start on the team but a happy and productive team will graduate lots of grateful seniors on time, most of whom joined, developed and thrived as active participants of their teams.
That’s what I hope for you and college-bound applicants. On the practical side of things, I hope that applicants who get this message will be reducing the size of their college lists and making it conform to the type of school that will suit them personally, whatever league or division it may be.
Go 'gate!
I know your assessment was a generality, and generalities tend to be inaccurate when applied to specific situations, however, my experience does not match up to yours. Specifically, I do not believe that NESCAC players are just high school starters, although (excepting academy-like situations), they probably were high school starters. There are way too many All-State and All-Region players that played for high level club teams at the NESCACs. That was the point I was trying to make. Many folks think that the D3 level, including the NESCAC, is a continuation of high school play, and it really isn’t. It is a significant step up, particularly for the strong teams at strong schools.
Incidentally, I do not doubt for a minute that very weak D3 colleges play at a glorified high school level. But I don’t think that is true for the NESCACs.
Now could a lower ranked NESCAC football team be defeated by a large, high level high school football team from Texas? Perhaps. But I believe that is exception to the rule. At some NESCAC schools, there are B teams that play high schools for game experience. The B teams usually win handily.
I think it is fair to say the best players on most NESCAC teams could play at the Ivies, although they might not be the best players there. On the other hand, the least talented players at the Ivies might feel right at home on a NESCAC team.
I think that you really need to look at this on a sport by sport basis. And within the conferences, by sport and school. Tufts women’s softball, men’s lax and soccer, for example, don’t look much like those programs at Trinity, for example. Some NESCAC schools have turned out athletes on national teams.
It’s far more nuanced that NESCAC v. Ivies.