Ivy League vs. NESCAC

Athletic Recruits
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@gointhruaphase

I agree. There is a lot of interchangeable parts between the schools, but with some very notable exceptions and with Ivy ability outclassing NESCAC’s when there are anomalies.

For the most part, I’d agree that the majority of football players could be swapped out between the leagues, however I’d bet on the Princeton Field Hockey team against an all star team from the NESCAC. I appreciate that a few years ago Bowdoin played Middlebury in the D3 NCAA finals, and I’d still take Princeton.

Here is a list of the 2016 US Olympians from Princeton and their sports:

There were 28 Ivy Summer Olympians in Brazil. The NESCAC had 3… all Middlebury…all individual women’s sports (Cycling and Triathalon). The winter games have a similar Ivy feel, with numerous athletes representing other countries. My initial thought was the NESCAC’s would be stronger at winter sports, but the women’s ice hockey teams in the Ivy send a few each from Harvard/Princeton.

The NESCAC students are very good to great athletes, they just aren’t extraordinary. The Ivy’s are often great athletes with a few extraordinary athletes mixed into several sports.

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@gointhruaphase
“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.”

Yes, that’s exactly how I would phrase it. My son is off to Williams with a handful of others who were recruited by Ivies where they would probably have been middle-of-the-road swimmers. But at D3, they will likely be national level swimmers.

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Not sure about that. The schools don’t play each other, and in fact the NESCAC doesn’t play any out of conference games at all, making it a kind of odd duck. So it is impossible to say how NESCAC teams would fair against other D3 schools, let alone Ivy schools. Just based on my general knowledge of the sport, I doubt seriously that any of the NESCACs would be competitive with the top handful of D3 teams, and that it is likely they would get smoked by most if not all of D2, let alone D1. Middlebury does scrimmage the Dartmouth JV (basically the incoming freshmen and maybe the bottom third of the sophmore class) every year. That game is usually pretty competitive. So, a varsity NESCAC team playing even with a group of freshman who have been in a college program for maybe three weeks does not bode well for the NESCAC’s overall competitiveness vis the Ivy.

I think this is closer to the reality. There will be several players on NESCAC rosters who were in the running for a likely letter right up until the end. So it is probably safe to say that in football at least, the bottom quarter to third of an Ivy recruiting class (say 8-10 kids) could be swapped out for the top of a NESCAC class in any given year without too much of a quality drop off. That said, and maybe this is somewhat sport specific, but those same kids who could have been at home on the roster at Princeton or Amherst as incoming freshmen (to use my son’s personal favorites from each league) will likely be very different athletes after four years.

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OP wrote: I wanted to know the differences between the two leagues in regard to cross country and track. I’m going to be a senior this year and am looking at running mainly between schools in these two conferences. I want to hear about the differences between the two and what the pros and cons of each are? What are the time commitments like? Also, any personal experiences would help.

My S does T&F at an Ivy. The time commitment for him is approximately 3 hours a day five days a week for practice and lifting. Practices are held all school year long from August through Heps (up toNCAA regionals and beyond for some). He returns early from winter break right after the new year. When indoor season starts in January he is occupied almost every weekend with meets in the NY, PA, CT areas. They travel by charter bus and usually they are overnight trips as the Ivies are not same day driving distance from each other. There is a dark period between indoor and outdoor season with no meets. For spring break there is a team that competes in two meets in another state but athletes have to qualify for that team. Most of his teammates are stem majors like him, so they’ve proven that you can be successful in both academics and athletics. It takes discipline with your time though and a passion for your sport to do this rigorous routine for four years. The reason my S chose his school was the level of academics and athletic ability of his teammates. He wanted to challenge himself. He had a great offer from a very good LAC but he would’ve been the top performer there so he turned them down to be in a more competitive league, but that’s just his personality. To be able to say he got his degree from an Ivy while competing in D1 athletics means a lot to him when he’s done with undergrad. You may feel differently though.

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Maybe not in all sports, but I would think that the level of improvement would be much higher over 4 years in most Ivy sports vs. most NESCAC sports. You have a longer season, play against higher caliber opponents, practice with higher caliber teammates, and probably have better resources, which will mean more money for travel, equipment, specific training, coaches, etc .

I think that issue should be a non-factor for most athletes that compete in both leagues. But for those who at least want to keep the door open to a professional career or an olympic run, it can be a big factor. Plus many of these athletes are so ingrained in the competitive mindset, they just flat out want to be the best they can be, even if they know they will retire when they are 22. That drive is part of what got them into a position to make the decision in the first place.

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^^to add, I really can’t list pros and cons on behalf of my S but I can tell you that two guys from his squad competed at the Rio Olympics so that tells you the caliber of athletes he is surrounded by. These are guys who take their sport seriously even if they don’t make it to the next level. They are competing to make the A squad, the freshman record, the meet record, you name it. A pet peeve and frustration of my S in HS were other athletes who didn’t take track seriously and treated the sport like it was a social club. He has so much respect for the sport and he wanted to train with coaches who felt the same way and he found that at his school.

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It really does depend on the sport. For example in skiing - the NESCACs and Ivies compete against each other - Dartmouth and Middlebury regularly finish in the top 5-10 in the country, and send athletes to the Olympics all the time, but overall the NESCACs tend to outperform the ivies in skiing.

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Skiing is a great example of my prior points.

Here’s a link to the results of last years NCAA ski championships. http://www.ncaa.com/2017-skiing-championship

You’ll see that Dartmouth came in 4th, followed by 5 NESCAC schools. Total score: Darthmouth 400, NESCAC 393. Pretty close…right?

If you know the NCAA ski program, you know that Dartmouth and the NESCACs are in the same league. Only 2 Ivy Ski teams (Harvard). 5 NESCAC’s (Bowdoin, Bates, Middlebury, Williams, and Colby).

They attend the same races throughout the winter, along with schools like UVM, UNH and BC. There are only 15(?) schools in the east with NCAA teams. Dartmouth won weekend competition all winter minus one…when UVM won (UVM was second all year).

This is a tiny sample size, but a good student who happens to be an elite athlete when given a choice will attend the Ivy. Very good athletes who are good students attend NESCAC schools. That is not a knock on the NESCAC, it’s just the power that the D1 / Ivy mix offers to the unicorns out there with extraordinary athletic gifts.

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Interesting discussion with a lot of good points. Obviously track, unlike many sports, has readily available performance metrics that make it easy to compare schools and conferences, and as it’s an individual sport the metrics are directly comparable in a way they’re not in team sports. While there is certainly overlap between NESCAC and Ivy track, on average the Ivy track athletes are significantly better (just as in turn, on average they’re better in the Pac 12 or SEC than in the Ivy).

A lot of track athletes that are average in the Ivy context, would be all time school record holders at NESCAC schools. And at the top end of Ivy track talent, there are occasional NCAA champions (as at Princeton and Penn in the last few years) and a handful of Olympians (as at Dartmouth, Yale, Cornell, and Harvard for sure and maybe other Ivies in 2016).

None of which is to say the Ivy is a better choice than NESCAC for a particular individual, for all the reasons discussed above. Just that it’s a pretty clear distinction as far as the relative levels of athletic performance.

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@EyeVeee. You go too far with this statement:

“This is a tiny sample size, but a good student who happens to be an elite athlete when given a choice will attend the Ivy. Very good athletes who are good students attend NESCAC schools.”

Through the recruiting season, my DS was a top 250 swimmer nationally with multiple USA Swimming Winter and Summer Junior National cuts. He was aggressively recruited by William & Mary and Dartmouth among many other D1 swim programs but chose Williams College, a NESCAC. His last two favorites were Dartmouth and Williams. So, yes, though it is apparently very difficult for you to imagine, nationally recruited D1 atheletes regularly choose D3. He will be joined this fall at Williams alone by three other similarly competitive men’s swimmers who had Ivy or military academy options. And this is just one NESCAC team.

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First, it’s crazy to characterize NESCAC athletes as merely solid high school starters. Most recruited NESCAC athletes were absolute superstars in their sports, not just at their high school, but regionally. For example, last year’s Williams’ women soccer team, which won the 2016 national championship, had three STATE Gatorade players of the year on the squad. They’ve enrolled yet another for this fall. In basketball, most of the significant contributors in NESCAC were all-conference / all-region and many made all-state squads. The best player on 90 percent of high school sports teams couldn’t make a significant impact at any NESCAC program, in any sport.

Second, you really do have to look sport-by-sport, and school-by-school. The very top NESCAC men’s basketball programs, which compete at the very highest level of Division 3 (Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury) all have multiple players who could contribute at schools in the bottom third of the Ivy League, and in many cases were recruited by some Ivy League programs. With rare exceptions (like Duncan Robinson, who transferred from Williams to Michigan where he has been a starter) couldn’t, however, compete at the top few Ivy programs in any given year.

Football is different. Any Ivy league team would absolutely crush even the best NESCAC squad. There is just a huge difference in talent and also in off-season training and physical development. But in tennis, on the other hand, if you look at both the men’s and women’s recruits that the top few NESAC programs (again, Williams, Amherst and Middlebury most years, along with Bowdoin some years) bring in, they have very similar rankings and recruiting profiles to the recruits the bottom few Ivy league programs bring in – there just isn’t a dramatic difference there.

Turning now to the advantages of NESCAC vs. the Ivy League, some of which have already been covered:

(1) In NESCAC, you will have the chance in MANY sports at MANY schools to compete for NCAA championships, year after year. That is rarely the case in Ivy League athletics (with some exceptions, like lacrosse). A lot of folks would rather get to play in 1-2 D3 final fours and 3-4 D3 NCAA championships over four years than playing for a mid-tier Ivy League program that never sniffs an NCAA D1 tournament. NESCAC is, across the board, by far the most dominant league in D3 athletics, whereas Ivy is in the bottom tier of many D1 sports.

(2) The allure of playing multiple sports. Many, many NESCAC athletes play multiple sports. Many of them could have gone Ivy, or to another D1 school, if they agreed to focus on only one sport. It’s far harder due to competition, longer seasons, and tougher in-season time commitments to play multiple sports at the D1 level, and you have to be a truly spectacular athlete to even have a prayer of doing so. At NESCAC schools, on the other hand, a huge number of athletes compete in multiple sports.

(3) The ability to engage deeply in campus life outside of athletics and academics. You’ll routinely see NESCAC athletes as editors of the campus paper, leaders in student government, members of campus music and arts groups, etc. etc. That’s much tougher as a D1 athlete.

(4) Earlier opportunity for significant playing time. Many NESCAC athletes can compete or even start for Ivy programs, but might have to wait a few years, while at NESCAC they can start as an underclassman.

Now, I’m not saying that the majority of NESCAC athletes could have played at an Ivy. But across the top athletic programs in NESCAC, there are a substantial number of athletes who chose to go D3 despite D1 offers or serious interest, for many very good reasons.

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I believe that track and cross country results are a lot closer in the NESCAC to some of the IVY results. Looking at last years Paul Short cross country race here are the average team times and places:
4) UPenn 24:11
5) Columbia 24:14
7) Dartmouth 24:17
9) Cornell 24:23
13) Harvard 24:46
14) Williams 24:51
25) Tufts 25:19
The following teams ran in a different heat but same course same day:
Princeton 25:00
Middlebury 25:30
Wesleyan 25:57

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You said it better than I did, @Ephman. But, yes, my kid – as an example of the caliber of top NESCAC recruits – was a 3-time All State swimmer, a 12-time conference champion for a 6A high school (2000+ students) with multiple junior national cuts. He was named to the USA Swimming Scholastic All America team in all three years of eligibility. So, yes, something of a superstar with lots of mid-level D1 interest. It is true that he was a top NESCAC recruit, but there are 3-4 men’s swimmers joining his team who are roughly peers. They were all high school superstars, and most of the incoming men had USA Swimming junior national cuts – the measure for solid D1 recruits.

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@ephman, you make a lot of good points. Although I do think it is fair to state that, as with the earlier digression about Stanford and the Director’s Cup, most NESCAC schools sponser far more varsity teams than other Division 3 schools. For example, Williams, which has won the Director’s Cup every year except three since its inception, sponsers thirty two sports. Washington St Louis, which finished second in the D3 Director’s Cup last year, sponsers seventeen. Emory, which finished third, sponsers eighteen. Middlebury was fourth and sponsers twenty nine. While I do not in any way mean to take away from the success of the NESCAC conference, this is a huge advantage in a system that calculates the highest point total of the eighteen best teams at a given school.

I also think that before a conference can be called “by far the most dominant” it would need to compete successfully and consistently in sports that are maybe more nationally popular &/or economically less restrictive. Clearly, the NESCAC is dominant, or at least very strong, in sports like lax, tennis, field hockey, crew, squash, etc. But they fair less well in the more popular sports. In other words, a conference that is a non factor in football, claims one championship each in baseball and softball and I think four or five combined in men’s and women’s basketball in the last almost half century is a long way from all sports dominance, imho.

All that said, you are absolutely correct that some kids are going to trade having more success, either individually or as a team member, for the opportuinty to play at a generally higher level against better competition. Others are going to choose the higher level, because in the main that is what good and serious athletes do, test themselves against the best competition they can find. My guess, based on my own history as a once indestructible eighteen year old athlete who choose a perennial sub .500 D1 school over a lot of options in D2 and D3, is that most kids with the talent and committment necessary to play in D1 are going to choose the higher level and trust in their abilities to find success. But not everyone will make that choice, and it is certainly not irrational to choose otherwise. I think @SwimDad99 hits it squarely when he said that his son had to decide between being a top of the heap performer for a good squad against being a middling performer for a middling squad. As I said previously, my son choose the Ivy for largely competitive reasons even though he thought the academics at some of the NESCAS were mostly on par with the Ivy schools recruiting him. Maybe he would have made a different decision if his options were going to Amherst, a dominant team in the NESCAC, or perennial Ivy bottom dweller Cornell.

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Those numbers may be literally correct, but they may exaggerate the situation, because some of the sports sponsored by Williams, Middlebury and other NESCACs are technically ineligible for Director’s Cup points.

Director’s Cup points are awarded based on performance in NCAA post-season events. This means that NESCACs can’t get points for sports like:

  • Football. NESCACs decline to participate in the NCAA DIII football tournament (just as the Ivies decline to participate in the NCAA DI-FCS football tournament). So even if a school wins the NESCAC football championship, it forfeits the chance to earn Director's Cup points.
  • Men's Squash. Not an NCAA sport, no points. Too bad for Trinity (the reigning national champion -- and that includes schools at all levels).
  • Women's Squash. See Men's Squash. Women's Squash was once considered as a possible NCAA sport, but didn't make the cut.
  • Men's Rowing. Not an NCAA sport, no points. Women's Rowing is NCAA and counts, but Men's Rowing does not.
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Also:

  • Skiing. NESCACs typically sponsor separate Men's and Women's ski teams, but skiing is considered a coed sport for Director's Cup scoring. So for Director's Cup purposes, a school can only have one ski team (not two).

So Williams drops from 32 sports total to 27 points-eligible sports. For comparison, I count 26 points-eligible sports at MIT, which is also DIII.

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@corbett, fair enough. But Williams is still looking at 25 or 27 varsity sports and Middlebury either 24 or 26, depending in both instances on whether indoor and outdoor track are considered distinct sports. Contrast that with 17 or 19 for WUSTL or 16 or 18 for Emory. It is still a huge advantage for the NESCAC schools.

FWIW, I am still counting football as an NCAA sport because quite frankly I don’t think the NESCAC schools would be competitive with the top dozen or so D3 schools in any event. The reality is that there is a big difference between the top of D3 and everyone else in football. Even then, there are very, very few schools not named Wisconsin Whitewater or Mount Union that have a legitimate chance at a National Championship year to year. And yes, I am aware that neither won it last season

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NESCAC is by no means dominant in D3 baseball. Not a single team in the top 25 right now, and only one Championship in 50 years.

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For Director’s Cup purposes, men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track are scored as separate sports. So the higher number is appropriate. Whether it makes sense for T&F to count so heavily (as four sports) in the Director’s Cup scoring is another question.

You may be right, but it doesn’t matter as far as Director’s Cup scoring is concerned. A school is rewarded with points just for making the DIII football playoffs, even if they lose in the first round (of course, schools get more points if they make it further). The NESCAC champion gets an automatic bid to the DIII playoffs every year, and they decline it every year. So even if we assume that the NESCAC champions would always lose in the first round, they are still leaving points on the table by declining to play at all.

Another strong DIII school is Johns Hopkins (#2 in 2015 and #5 last year). I count 23 points-eligible sports at JHU (fencing is coed for DC purposes), which is probably within NESCAC range. Same for Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (#4 last year), which arguably has an advantage over any NESCAC because the team combines the best athletes from three different liberal arts colleges. And MIT, with 26 points-eligible sports, finished a very respectable #11 last year (higher than most NESCACs).

Obviously more points-eligible sports are better. But the NESCACs aren’t the only DIII schools that have more than, say, WUSTL or Emory.

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Again, I am not saying the NESCAC is not a very strong conference. I am just saying that using the Director’s Cup standings to support the point that it is the “most dominant” D3 conference is not very persuasive, because they support far more sports than the vast majority of schools in D3 and especially because it is nowhere near dominant in any of the national sports. The fact that Hopkins and Claremont also support a lot of different sports is also not surprising, since it seems obvious that wealthy, very selective schools will tend to support sports which are of interest to the dominant demographic from which the schools draw.

And fine, pull football. The NESCACs still have a huge advantage over the rest of D3. Pulling football from consideration and based on the chart on the NESCAC website, Amherst has 24 eligible sports, Bates 24, Bowdoin 22, Colby 24, Conn 23, Hamilton 25, Midd 26, Trinity 25, Tufts 26, Wes 25, and Williams 27. That’s a ton. By contrast, teams in the UAA, which I think is probably the most similar D3 conference, sponsor an average of 19 teams. Unfortunately there is no handy dandy chart on the UAA website that breaks sports participation down by school.

In its simplest terms, if I get to throw 27 darts (Williams) at a board and the guy I am playing only gets to throw 21 (assuming JHU lax doesn’t count in the D3 standings) or 19 (WUSTL), I am going to win more often than not. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I am a better darts player.