Walk-ons at Yale: they need you!

maineparent
Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:59:29 +0000

Gosh, you were on this story bright and early, yes? I am on the other end of the day with my thoughts on this.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!!