<p>[Recruitment</a> caps strain teams | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/jan/27/recruitment-caps-strain-teams/]Recruitment”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/jan/27/recruitment-caps-strain-teams/)</p>
<p>Gosh, you were on this story bright and early, yes? I am on the other end of the day with my thoughts on this. </p>
<p>My immediate reaction (as a parent of a track and field kid) when first reading this story was “why is it featuring track and field?” Kind of then realized that it is easy for a retiring program director to make comments about the negative impact of recruitment caps vs active program directors. It is great that the article cites specific numbers regarding greater team size for Princeton and Cornell, which typically lead the Heps. There was no mention about men’s ice hockey…currently #1 in the country!! I also wonder if you get more slots if you have a winning record? Or do you get more slots if you are at the bottom of your league? </p>
<p>We went to a track meet this past weekend, tri-meet with Columbia, Dartmouth and Yale. Dartmouth won the men’s meet, Yale 2nd… and we suspect that Dartmouth won just in sheer numbers. There were events with only Dartmouth athletes. No Yale, No Columbia athletes. Nothing against the Big Green talent…but depth of bench which enables you to capture 11 points by running 1st, 2nd 3rd and 4th place in a single event without competitors is a definite competitive advantage. </p>
<p>However, back to the article. I had a different, unexpected reaction to the entire story…which is that it seems kind of nice that there are slots available for walk-ons to make a contribution to Yale’s athletic rosters. College is such a wonderful time to try different things. How great that there is still room for kids to try on D1 sports during their college years. There is definitely plenty of room for participating in the residential college athletic competitions. But the resources for the varsity teams are better…and so for the student population at large, I guess I am happy that not all rosters are sewn up tight before the kids even arrive on campus for their 4 years. </p>
<p>My biggest wish is that the admissions office would do a better job of disseminating the information about the newly matriculated non-recruited students to the athletic department. Identify those students whose HS EC’s include track to the track department. Identify those students who HS EC’s include 4 yrs varsity tennis to the tennis team. Then the walk on recruitment effort could have specific kids as their focus. </p>
<p>The REAL question is will the caps remain in place once the new colleges are completed? Assuming the class size increases by 200, will the athletic department get an uptick in their headcounts? I hope so!! I remain stunned at the number of apps that HYPS schools are receiving…my oldest graduated HS in 2004 and I think Harvard’s apps have grown from 20,000 then to 35,000 today, over 6, 7 years. If a kid could only master walking on water…better yet, running on water!! Every swim coach in the country would want that athlete!!</p>
<p>maineparent- i was at the tri meet as well, it was a great evening. Your observation of Dartmouth participants was a little skewed, I remember one distance race that had at least 15 participants in light blue uniforms. The two other schools were well represented in the distance events.</p>
<p>"However, back to the article. I had a different, unexpected reaction to the entire story…which is that it seems kind of nice that there are slots available for walk-ons to make a contribution to Yale’s athletic rosters. College is such a wonderful time to try different things. How great that there is still room for kids to try on D1 sports during their college years. There is definitely plenty of room for participating in the residential college athletic competitions. But the resources for the varsity teams are better…and so for the student population at large, I guess I am happy that not all rosters are sewn up tight before the kids even arrive on campus for their 4 years. "</p>
<p>Im sorry, WHAT? This is a D1 program, and D1 programs require recruits. Especially since, forgive the stereotype, most kids who would apply to a school like Yale didnt have track and field as their main extra curricular. Yes, it is great that the team is not * entirely * recruits, but that doesnt take away from the fact that Yale cannot recruit the best possible student-athletes because they found them too late in the recruitment process or something like that. I dont know what the stats are for other D1 (did I mention this is D1?) teams, but the fact that Yale allows for any walk ons is impressive… whats not impressive is that we have to RELY on them to fill a team that cannot be adequately filled via recruitment due to these caps. (not to mention, the average “normie” Yalie was accepted for many other reasons… reasons that are likely filled by other quite time consuming extra curricular activities on campus)</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I hope you know that the best tennis recruits are homeschooled and those who attend regular school often not do participate in HS tennis. Tennis development just does not happen in HS. The idea that there are tennis players good enough to play for an Ivy (D1 programs) that can get randomly accepted without coach’s support is suspect.</p>
<p>^ Really? Interesting. Our hs has a tennis team (also golf, and all the ypical ones)
though I haven’t paid attention to the recruiting for tennis especially.</p>
<p>EfFects are visible. Note the heps results.</p>
<p>Quite frankly, there are VERY FEW athletes that are good enough to play (even for the Ivy league 
purely based on four years of high school sports. Most very good athletes, even if they play the sport for their high school teams — and many don’t — play and train somewhere else in addition, e.g for a club team, national team, etc. I always have to smile when a parent thinks their kid is recruitable solely because they’re on the varsity team of their high school. Crew may be an exception because there are top programs run by high schools, but even then, many recruits come from club programs or via the USRowing programs.</p>
<p>^^^Football</p>
<p>As various people have pointed out, whether a student who played a varsity sport for four years is a good candidate for being a walk-on in college depends on the sport. </p>
<p>Of course, a college would want a football player to have played for his school; to my knowledge, there’s no such thing as club football, so school is it. As klu375 said, in tennis, many of the best players are home-schooled so they’ll have more time to train. Some of the very best tennis players don’t play on their school teams because they are so far ahead of the other players that they’d get little real training during practice, and only USTA tournaments matter much for college recruiting. (My son, who is good but not great, goes to varsity tennis practice, then from there to his year-round club training, every day.)</p>
<p>I have heard that some coaches of elite players in some sports forbid their club players to play the sport at school because the risk of injury is greater than the potential benefit to the player. I don’t know how common this is.</p>