Worth reading
https://www.vnews.com/Former-college-athletes-from-the-Upper-Valley-19355557
Edited subject.
Interesting read. Mirrored my experiences playing D1. Thank you for,sharing!
It reads as if in the end, most of them are happy they played sports and played something else if they left their main (recruited) sport.
I think one problem is most of them thought they were better than they were and weren’t starters at their college teams. If a girl is good enought to be recruited to UVM lacrosse, there are hundreds of other programs where she could have been a starter. The athletic has to decide if she wants to go to a top program and be a bench player or another school and be a starter.
My daughter took a chance on a new program, knowing it was possible she’d lose a lot of games. It really worked out much better than we could have hoped. She not only started every game for 4 years, she played almost every minute of every game, and they finished in the top 5 in the nation for her junior and senior years. She was one of ‘those’ kids who did a lot of conditioning on her own, thought it was fun to go for a 3 mile run on Sunday mornings, went to the mandatory study tables (and enjoyed them). She did all that extra conditioning in the summer and always returned to school in shape and ready to go. Others didn’t, and they weren’t starters. She had a social life (belonged to a sorority) and a boyfriend since freshman year. She had friends outside her team but to be honest most were also athletes because they had similar interests.
It was a great experience.
This article illustrates one of the things I have always said about our high school’s push for every athlete to continue at the college level. A huge deal is made each year as to who and where kids are going to continue playing but looking at it from the inside a very high percentage tend to quit the sport after a year.
I have always thought, and this article helps to illustrate that the HS pushes kids to pick a school based on athletic fit as opposed to overall fit. Once these athletes get on campus and see that they will not be a starter, the work involved, the school is too small, they don’t like an urban campus, etc. They make a change. I have seen kids go to a local division 3 that is well below their academic abilities just to play, when they easily could have gone to a much more appropriate academic fit had the HS not pushed sports so hard in the decision.
My son almost fell into this trap but having been a division 1 athlete myself I was able to direct his decision making a bit. We sat down early in the process and I asked him to rank what he wanted from a school. His list in the beginning was 1. Play, 2. Big school, 3. Football team with TV contract to follow later in life, 4. major, and on from there. Given his ability in his sport (and the limited number of schools that offer it) #1 could not happen along with #2 and #3 they were incompatible. He had to think about which was really important and in the end he decided he did not want to go to a school that was smaller than his HS just to play. It was a tough pill to swallow but much better early in the process than after being on an incompatible campus for 6-10 months and then realizing he wasn’t happy.
In my experience, it’s been the parent and not the school that pushed the kid into the wrong school because of a sport. My son happily chose a school with a club team over the D3 school recruiting him, and it’s worked out great. A lot of the D3 friends weren’t so lucky. But it almost every case, it was the parent who was driving the process.
My son played a sport that he really enjoyed but has no professional league. So, as a parent, I was not lured into thinking that his sport was going to be his source of money as an adult and pushing him in that direction.
He had the talent to play D1 at the college level. He talked to several of his older, former teammates that were playing D1 and found out what a grind it was. Long afternoon practices, weekends (and more) traveling to games. One his friends was an engineering major, as my son was to be, and that was just not compatible (within reason) with the sport. He talked to a few D3 schools that also offered engineering, but the time away from the classroom (and more importantly, the labs) wasn’t much different.
So, he went to a college that played his sport at the club level and was quite content with that. Evening practices and one or two weekends a month away. I was OK with that (as if it mattered) and I felt he had his priorities in the right place.
To complete the story: He got injured working out prior to the start of his freshman year and played (poorly; still not fully healed) near the end of his freshman year and then quit. As a parent, my only disappointment in this whole matter was that he really had fun playing and he hasn’t played for years. He did play “masters” for a while but moved and never looked into it at his new location. I have played ice hockey all my life and made many good friends within the sport as well as having it a way to stay in shape. (that’s me in my icon picture) I wish he was doing the same, but it is his decision.
I really liked this article that dovetails so well with the one OP linked… I hope you enjoy it too…
http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/the-terror-of-facing-a-new-life
@2plus2ition great article!
Not much to add, but it hit all the high points: commitment, true skill levels, injury, burnout and some personal development and awareness. Most of these in the article sounded like healthy changes, so that’s a positive. But they all illustrate the need for the students to get in touch with who they are and want they want from college. It’s really hard to separate the accolades kids received from HS extra-curriculars from what they truly enjoy doing, who they like spending time with and how likely the thrill is to extend into the next stage of life. (And it isn’t just sports either, as mock trial success might not translate to a move into law if you really just enjoyed hamming it up as a witness instead of arguing as the attorney.) Anyway, as hard as it is to be the wet blanket it’s important for someone to ask the hard questions about how much you want to play at the next level, if you want to play or merely be on a great roster, if you’re willing to give up the study abroad or staying up all night boozing with the boys or just not aching when you get out of bed. Not an easy talk, but it should be had by someone if it feels too weird coming from a parent.