Questions about Division III recruited athletes?

tjmom
Tue, 02 Oct 2012 22:26:28 +0000

While I am certainly not an expert (or even have any knowledge about track in college at all), I do know a little bit about college sports. My son was “recruited” if you can call it that by one D1 and a couple of D2 and D3. He was not offered $ to compete for the school even at the D1 (they don’t have scholarships in wrestling) and of course D3 doesn’t have $ for any sports officially. (by that I mean, it appears that some schools give academic scholarships when maybe other non athletes with the same or better stats didn’t get these). He went to one of the D3 schools and competed for two years. The coaches do have some pull with admission if you need that to get in, but there is not a firm commitment from either the coach to get you in or for you to play. You can quit the team at any time. In fact, you can even do that at the D1 level however if you are on an athletic scholarship, you would lose that when you quit the team.

The time commitment was quite a bit more than my son was expecting- which is why he quit. He knew how long the practices were, but did not realize that the Saturday tournaments that the coach mentioned would usually involve leaving the school Friday early afternoon and not getting back until Sunday morning.

I would suggest that you really talk to the athletes themselves at the schools you are considering to see what the time commitment is. The other watch out that should have given us a heads up, but we didn’t catch it, is that there were no seniors or juniors on the team. My son was one of 18 or so freshmen on the team, two returned for sophomore year and only one for junior year. The time demanded was just too great.

You mention intramural and varsity- but most schools have a level in between that is usually called “club”. It is more informal but you do compete against other schools. Many of my son’s friends who are serious students but didn’t want to totally give up their sport did this.