That it’s just a casual incident to attending the college and practically anyone can just declare they want to do a sport and get to do it. Another one is that if you were good enough to be on the varsity at your high school you’re definitionally good enough to play the sport at the D3 level. And yet another one is that it’s just high school 2.0, athletically.
Setting aside that it annoys me as the father of two D3 athletes (both of which had plenty of D1 opportunities), it’s plainly inaccurate and uninformed.
And yet, even in this forum, where I’d expect a greater % of the “you should know better” crowd, we are regaled with anecdotes that may be technically true but don’t accurately convey what a typical D3 athletic program looks like. I find often that the individual stories of kids just “dropping in out of nowhere” are limited to particular sports and often are at places where the program is really struggling or it turns out it was actually a club sport and the story-teller failed to mention that detail.
The other thing that is entirely lost in the discussion is how a competitive D3 program is often, or at least is not infrequently, better than lower-end Division 1 programs. A great example of that would be the upper-tier NESCAC crews vs. schools like U Conn and Colgate, the latter of which are not in the same league of competitiveness as the D3 boats. Williams has had women’s soccer teams that can hold their own against a good number of D1 teams. You’re not just going to drop in to that program because you played soccer in high school and are looking to get some exercise. Forget it. Any woman who is recruited to play soccer at Williams was a very, very good club soccer player.
And Mr. Paul, a 10.5 and 21.2 sprinter could find a home at a great many D1 track programs. You might be a marginal athlete and perhaps the Wesleyan track team would let you walk on, but that doesn’t mean anyone is ever going to hear from you again. That’s my main point. That narrative takes away from people like Mr. Paul and D3 crews that I’ve watched with my own eyes beat the pants off of D1 boats.
Gotcha. I’m a NESCAC track parent and I see daily how hard these kids work and the tremendous amount of talent out there and how most of these kids prioritize school, practice 15-20 hours a week and have every single weekend from December through May dedicated to a meet that may include travel 5-6 hours each way. That’s also why I get annoyed when people here assert that anyone can walk on to the track team. They don’t cut anyone. It simply isn’t true. These are mostly very talented recruited athletes. And yes go Cardinals. I am also a Wes alum and love to see their team succeeding.
Right. And from a messaging standpoint, they’re not doing students who frequent this forum any favors. It’s not intramurals and that’s how some people make it sound.
Crew, as an example, as a sport has an open and welcoming attitude. But in addition to learning some technique, which is critical for the boat to go fast and with which some people really struggle, the training is brutal (mentally and physically) and weeds out the casuals very, very quickly. So, yes, you technically did walk on. No, you likely didn’t row in the big races unless you were a good athlete who picked up the technique, had the body type and were willing to do what it took to get a strong 2K erg time. Yes, Wes let you join their track team. No, you were not an athletic peer of a guy like Paul.
I walked on to crew my frosh year at Wesleyan and although I had been a multisport athlete in high school, it was by far the hardest thing I ever did physically. And I was not walking onto a varsity boat. I was walking on to a novice boat with really strong athletes who had all competed in other sports in high school. And I did not stick with it after the first year because the training was insane. Thanks for sticking up for these people!
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that D3 athletes, and particularly ones in this NESCAC conference, aren’t good. Some could have played D1.
What the narrative has been is that 1. not every kid on the team was brought in as an official recruit or even with soft support because those spots are limited and that 2. In some sports, a team may be able to add walk-ons to their rosters. 3. Most walk-ons will not be of the caliber of the recruits, but there are exceptions. 4. Teams with larger rosters may limit who travels, who dresses, etc.
It’s not clear to me why this seems to rankle. It takes nothing away from the athletes who got recruitment slots. Who starts, who plays, who makes the 1V boat – that all shakes out later and often over 4 years. Often it’s the recruits - but not always.
There are legitimate reasons too that a good athlete might show up at try outs. I know 2 kids who walked onto very good D1 (ACC and American) teams. One missed his junior year with a rather devastating leg injury, but had been put back together well enough to try out as a walk on. The other was a multi-sport athlete who was dead set on a particular school where he wasn’t recruited/couldn’t walk on for his primary sport but walked on for his secondary one. These kids aren’t exactly dropping out of nowhere.
This will be my last comment, because I am sure this conversation is annoying. It rankles because there is a supposition that many, many NESCAC athletes are walk ons. 1. I don’t think that’s true. 2. It sends the wrong message to parents on this group who think hey my kid is pretty good at baseball, he can just play at Tufts 3. It underestimates the time and emotional labor associated with being a NESCAC athlete. By the end of the season, these kids are toast. It’s not a club sport.
I only have the evidence of my D22’s HS best friend, who wanted to play D3, was recruited to Williams for their sport, did phenomenally well there, and was then recruited to play their sport in Europe post-grad. Seems like serious athletics to me.
Are there walk-ons for sports in college - yes there are, at all levels. “Walk-ons” are typically the athletes who are good enough to be on the team but (at D1 and D2) don’t receive an athletic scholarship or at D3, don’t receive coach support through the admissions process. This is typically because although they are good athletes, they aren’t the coaches’ top recruits. The coaches will typically say something along the lines of, “If you can get in, then you have a spot on the team.” Doesn’t mean they will ever see the field. Friend’s kid was a pitcher who was a “walk-on” at a D1 program. Never saw an inning
Other walk-ons (and I’ll keep this to baseball/softball) are when some teams have “tryouts” and are looking for a super-fast athlete to be a pinch-runner. They don’t play the field, they don’t hit, they only get in the game once for that purpose only.
I haven’t seen anyone mention on this thread that they have this supposition. Both my kids were college athletes, one in the NESCAC. There were a number of walk-ons on various varsity teams at the NESCAC school…I made a point of understanding this because at the time, I was a counselor helping student-athletes navigate recruiting.
While I deeply respect the commitment a student-athlete at any level makes, there is no need to flex.
D1 sports generally require more commitment than D3. Further, many D1 club sports not only have a higher level of talent than most D3 varsity teams, they can require a greater time/travel and often monetary commitment. Example, Duke women’s club soccer team would crush the vast majority of D3 teams, and quite a few non-P4/5 teams.
Let’s celebrate all of those who continue to play competitive varsity or club sports at any level.
Bard, Vassar, and Mount Holyoke have such cutes campuses. I think a lot of the other winners win because of so called harmonious architecture: Wake Forest, Duke, Rhodes (although Rhodes is also really cute). Wesleyan always gets dinged for being ugly, but I am a sucker for Richardsonian Romanesque.
To me, Wesleyan is the ultimate “eclectic architecture” campus. High Street resembles the Universal Studios back lot; there are so many styles. The whole place has a genteel, historic patina to it.
Alright, well I disagree with a lot that’s been said and would emphasize that we don’t know that non-slotted but code-factored athletes aren’t asked / required to apply ED, as I personally suspect they are in many/most cases.
With that said, the Argus has written another great article that is very topical to what we were discussing, and beyond.
While the context of the piece is Wesleyan’s athletics journey from a school that had a decidedly indifferent view about the role of sports to where it is now, there are several nuggets of information that I think would be of general interest to the NESCAC community. Here are some niblets:
Soka University of America has signed a letter of intent to purchase the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ campus in Monterey from Middlebury College. The parties are currently in the discovery phase; until that’s completed, we won’t know the terms of the sale. Soka plans to continue offering similar programs (translation services, international policy, global studies, etc.) to grad students.
NESCAC stalwart, Wesleyan and the 47th President of the United States finally have something in common: they have both spent a great deal of time reflecting upon the work of architect, Henry Bacon. Trump by driving his motorcade through the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool last weekend, and Wesleyan by its stewardship of several buildings designed by him: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/lincoln-memorial-reflecting-pool-trump-renovation-2767878
