Recruting Agent's perspective - Academics vs money

twoinanddone
Wed, 25 Mar 2015 20:12:48 +0000

Division 1 women’s volleyball is a ‘headcount’ sport, so she will either receive a full scholarship or nothing. Very competitive, very time intensive. It sounds like your daughter doesn’t want that at all so cross all D1 schools off your list (except maybe the Ivies, but then no merit or athletic money and still a lot of time).

Other schools are going to be as academically challenging as you make them. My daughter picked Div 2 because she liked the school the best. She is in engineering, and her order of importance is school, sport, social life. Some (most?) of her teammates do not have this order of priority, but my daughter does and honestly, a little of her power to say “I have to study” is because she’s a top player on the team. She is the youngest on the team, but the bossiest.

As far as being social friends with teammates, it’s about 50/50 for my daughter. She also is in a sorority so has the excuse to attend other functions. She also has friends from classes she studies with and does social events with (concerts, other sports). Right now they are in season so she is spending more time with her team but doesn’t always. This year she lives with teammates, but next year she’s going to live with other athletes she’s met (softball players). I thought it was a mistake to have the team freshmen live together and I was right - too much drama, too much time together, too much gossip.

College is not high school, and the social life is different. It is easier for my daughter to be independent of her team in college than it was in high school, but there is still lots of drama. Your daughter can control that drama by not living with the team, not doing everything with them, but then they are going to be snippy. My daughter doesn’t care. She really doesn’t have time to care. She goes to study tables at the library rather than join in the gossip and drama.