The kids I know at selective d3 schools have no trouble managing athletics and academics. Don’t forget that many of them have been juggling sports and academics for years. In fact my son’s school did a study and found athletes’ GPAs were higher when they were in season.
Now d1, and d1 big time sports, that’s another beast entirely.
This really depends a lot on the sport, the school and the conference. It is a good issue to raise because kids who want to play a varsity sport in college, and their parents, need to keep it in mind when they are thinking about schools. The D1 vs. D2 or D3 issue is the first hurdle, but I think that even in D1 things vary among schools and sports. My son ran D3 track at Denison. Denison is a very sport-focused school, and track is an all-year sport, so it was a very large commitment over four years, but I believe his participation on the team was a net positive, including from an academic standpoint. I think it is important to find schools that stand for the proposition that academics come first and that the student’s objective is to become an excellent student athlete. Most of the D3 schools we spoke with expressed this objective, the Denison track team certainly embodied it. If that message is clearly conveyed, being an athlete can help students to develop their organizational skills and self-discipline. It is also important to look at the conference the school competes in. Some are comprised of schools that are located relatively close to each other and some are not. It makes a difference. We were happy with the NCAC, which is comprised mostly of LACs in Ohio or nearby. There weren’t many (if any?) overnight trips for conference meets, although there were always a couple of invitationals around spring break that were further away (in warmer climes!).
I think for many it’s balancing athletics and social life, not academics. My kids are super happy with their teams and it’s plenty social but they do miss out on events the school organizes, or socializing with friends outside of the team, and those are important to them too. Some kids eventually decide that they’d rather have more time for those things, and that is ok.
In some sports I’m not sure anyone believe that concept exists now. For others, that concept will disappear if/when athletes become employees.
Separately, I know plenty of athletes at all levels who haven’t been able to balance academics/athletics/social life in the way they would like to. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t/didn’t think their sport was a positive in some way. Yet, plenty of student athletes don’t compete for four years, for any number of reasons.
This sounds like the way it should be!
I would also suggest the MIAC as a conference with minimal travel.
I think that it comes down to discipline and focus. If you are at the level required to play Ivy League, Patriot League, NESCAC, UAA, etc. you have been doing this for many years.
My D leads a pretty structured life at school; basically wake up early and workout (or extra study), eat, class, eat, class or study, practice for 3 hours, eat, study, sleep, repeat six days a week. She loves it, is thriving and having fun but it is different than what many kids want for a college experience.
Her HS was a tippy top HS program (perennially national top 25 in her sport and her club was the same. In her world this isn’t anything new and college has been less demanding than HS.
The article mentions Stanford and UCLA. The big change for these schools is the Pac-12 conference dissolved, so now they are in far away conferences that require long flights to games. Stanford is now in the Atlantic Coast Conference and regularly plays game thousands of miles away on east coast. UCLA is in the Big Ten conference, which is mostly midwest, but also includes colleges, like Penn State.
When I was an athlete at Stanford we consistently utilized the maximum NCAA allowed practice time of 20 hours per week, which I expect hasn’t changed. The difference is games required far less travel on average than present.
Thanks OP. I think this is an underappreciated issue.
I strongly recommend that parents of more academically inclined athletes spend time researching the schedules and travel requirements of teams they are considering.
Our kid works more efficiently at a desk than in a bus. We felt if they were to continue with varsity athletics they would be better off at a school where the majority of competitions were within about an hour of campus. For those with a similar preference, there were schools in the MIAC, NEWMAC, SCIAC, and Centennial conferences that suited that desire particularly well. (I’m sure there are others). It’s important to do the map work for the school you are interested as sometimes a school can be on outlier geographically in a conference.
There have been various studies on the effects of sports (and recruiting) on the student. There does seem to be data showing at least differences in the distribution of majors, and perhaps other things. But at the level of an individual, there’s huge variability, and for some athletics might actually help them with schoolwork, not to mention overall happiness.
Still, I think it’s important to consider the hidden costs of the heavy time commitment of sports. It’s not just grades, field of study, or social life that can be impacted. It can limit time available for some ECs that can help with grad school or job applications, like research and independent projects, being a TA/tutor, joining an academic team, or having a part time job. They should leave some time to try things they haven’t even thought of when applying! Interests evolve, and 17 year olds often are not the most reliable predictors of their education or career path.
Yes, those Stanford athletes are really logging in the miles. There has always been travel, but the move to the ACC has increased this enormously. When they went through the failed rationalization of sports a few years ago, there were a few propsed cuts on the list precisely because there were so few schools nearby. (Field hockey, iirc?) Seems that is now a given.
No student has time to do it all, and athletes have to dedicate a chunk of time to their sport. My kid tended to do better academically in season. He had to quit his sport during college because of an injury. His life was quite different at that point. No less busy/filled, but much more of the time was his to fill.
When he was an athlete, most travel involved leaving on Friday and returning Sunday. They took work with them and it was helpful if teammates were in the same classes. I do wonder how much this impacts some of the trends around the majors athletes choose.
This is something prospective athletes should consider – as well as whether the academic calendar will allow them to shift the course load from their season to other parts of the year, including summer (and what the impact of that is for employment, etc…)
I’ve suggested several times in the last few years that students/parents look at the schedules for the teams and how much they travel before committing.
My daughter’s team was new, so the coach was new. The first year she had them traveling 3 weekends in a row on 10 hour bus trips. The players were exhausted. And it was getting close to finals time.
The next year it dawned on the coach that they were in Florida and teams from out of the conference would travel to them on spring break. So from then on they played 11 of their 16-17 games at home, and the rest were conference games so in state and less than 3 hours away.
The school also helped. All math tests were on Thurs nights, and the coaches tried not to schedule away games on Thurs. Most buses headed out on Friday morning. Athletes could take quizzes in the first section on Friday mornings.
Freshmen on any team had study tables for at least the first semester, and after that if they didn’t have a 3.0 GPA (one of D’s teammates had them for a long while) Ass in seat in the library for 8 hours a week. My daughter loved them.
Daughter was a D2 player, graduated in 4 yrs in engineering, with honors and loved (most) of her time playing. We got lucky with the travel schedules for years 2-4. We got lucky that all those NY and PA teams were willing to travel for spring break to Florida. e NCAA championships (they just waited around for the payoffs).
Look at the schedules.
She did get to register for classes first, but it didn’t matter after the first year because there was usually only one section. The first semester she was supposed to register first, on a Friday night. Her registration was blocked because the 'school hadn’t received her final hs transcript (they had 3 copies in a duplicate folder). She was blocked from a required class. Oh, within 5 minutes the coach had her changed to the other section. A miracle opened up one more seat in the lab that worked for the coach.
*Check the travel of the team for the last few years.
*Check when the team plays (Tues? Sunday nights?)
*Check if the school even has classes on Fridays.
*Know if your student can study on a bus (my can’t because gets car sick)
*Know if your student is willing to give up social life. Mine didn’t have much of one outside of her team and the men’s team. She was in a sorority but didn’t do much with them. About half her team dated/married other athletes (including her)
*Check if the school supports athletes with flexibility in testing, labs, scheduling
I’m not saying some schools don’t put athletics before academics, but IME most put academics first. Many athlete are top students. Many balance both just fine (but maybe not a typical college social life of partying all the time). I thought athletics required my daughter to organize her semester and stick to a schedule.
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