Tell me about your college athletic experience

x2

Sorry, I got nothing to add  beyond this.  I did get a bunch of letters  from D3 schools for football, but never really did anything with them and never took any visit.

Looking back, I kind of wish that I had, as some of the schools sending me information were some pretty good ones.  The two that stick out were Washington University in St. Louis and University of Chicago, among some others.

I played baseball at a smaller d-1 state school.  This is before college baseball is what it is now.  We'd be lucky to get 200 people in the stands back then.

I started to get some letters my junior year and a few more my senior year.  I didn't want to leave the state so only talked to three coaches from in state.  All very professional and businesslike.  They were pretty adamant about the amount of work it would be to juggle classes (I was an Accounting major) and play sports.  I had a full scholarship which I took full advantage of.  I probably wouldn't do it again because it got to the point where baseball just wasn't fun anymore.

If I remember correctly D2 schools only offer partial scholarship and D3 schools don't have scholarship programs for athletics.

There are a lot of junior colleges with basketball programs as well if your son would be interested in that.

I ran fast so they invited me......I didn't go to class much and partied more so they uninvited me....then the Marine Corps let me in because I had nowhere to go. 

The end.

Started at a D1 for hockey. I red shirted and got cut. A year later I transferred to a D3 school. Not to play hockey but long story short I ended up playing there for 3 years.

Like was mentioned before the coaches I met with or spoke to over the phone were very professional. I thought they were very honest their assessment of my ability and how they perceived that I would fit on the team good and bad.

All the smaller schools stressed the academic programs and after meeting with the coaches you would generally meet with someone in the admissions office.

Also, I went on about a half dozen recruiting trips which were an experience on there own.

I was offered academic scholarships but I don't think they have D3 athletic scholarships.

I was pretty immature both mentally and physically at that time of my life so if I had to do it all over again, I would have jumped at the chance I was given to go play with Waterloo in the USHL for a couple of years. It would given me time to mature and then I might have been able to reach my potential in the sport and play D1. And it would have been a once in a lifetime experience to play hockey as basically a full time job. I passed on it because I couldn't imagine living in Iowa by myself (being from Maine) and I just thought that you just had to go to college right out of high school.

NAIA football player 02-06'

Here is my advice from my experience. I was a good small high school football player that was undersized. I had TONS of JUCOs calling/writing and quite a few NAIA's, I wanted D2 but they told me to walk-on. If I could do it all over again I would have just walked on at a D2 school. I didnt want to go the JUCO route, I wanted to stay at the same place and not re-start the recruiting process all over again after JUCO, and also worry about courses transferring. 

You have to sell yourself at the smaller school levels. Have your son fill out all of the questionaires to HUNDREDS of schools, I didnt do this and I wish I would have. Start doing this your junior year.

Unless your just a complete stud, you will have to do some of your own recruiting (fill out the forms/send tape/etc). Your HS coaches can help a TON with this, and hurt you also. They should have some college connections use them.

When you get stuff in the mail from schools, always fill the stuff out. Write thank you letters and what not. Also after getting letters from a school, try and get the ball rolling with other schools in that conference. Make them compete for you (this is $$$).

Alot of the NAIA schools are private and are founded on religious affilations. Depending on your area, their can be gentlemans agreement that other schools with that affilation will NOT recruit in that area. But they can recruit you if you START the process, not the school.

When I was in school it was around $17,000 a year... not cheap. After scholarships from football and other stuff it came about to about $8,000 a year. About the same as a state school but I got to play ball. My school was helpful in placing athletes in "school jobs" to help earn extra cash such as supervising the on campus fitness center/gym.

Hope this helps. If you have any more questions ask away.

Not sure by what you meant by "material"...

My cons at the NAIA level... the school I ended up choosing had quite a few rules that fell in line with their religious affilation (not mine). When I was recruited by the coaches they did a fairly good job of hiding these. And many of the NAIA schools are "private" so they may have weird rules as far as housing goes, look into that. The school was pretty small, about 2000 undergrads.

My positives... we WON alot!!! three top 10 finishes and 2 conference titles. The smaller atmosphere kept you in line more with going to classes and not partying too hard. Smaller classes made the school part easier, but made the "college experience" less college. It felt more like HS.

I don't know much about D3 schools, not too many in my area. But I do know they are more $$$ and offer lil to no $$$ for athletic scholarships. At least for this area.

D2 is quite a bit cheaper and most schools are big enough to feel like college, but not so big you get lost in the crowd.

Also... this may not work for bball, but try and get past rosters from each team while that coaching staff has been in place. See if their is much turn-over. Numbers don't lie.

I didn't realize men's synchro was so wild.  

Ran XC at a D3 school. Walked on. No one got scholarships. I had a conversation with the coach 1-2 times before I got there and we started practices a week before school started.

We received $40/year for shoes, had meals/travel expenses paid for if we went out of town for meets, and uniforms were included. It was fun, I'd do it again, but it was low pressure since we weren't "bought and paid for" with scholarships. A lot of people participated in college sports at my school because it was easy to do so.

I did run for a Division 1 school, one of the top programs in the country, but was definitely NOT a 5-star recruit. (School shall go unnamed but anyone who follows my posts can probably guess.)  In my case I was offered schoarships ranging from partial to full ride by many Dvision 2 and 3 schools and several Division 1 schools, but ended up going to one of the few schools which DIDN'T offer me an athletic scholarship, as I had fallen in love with the location (on a family trip, not a recruiting trip), and liked the academic program there. I did get a National Merit Scholarship and a pretty generous honors scholarship from the school. Later, I believe I got a small stipend for books/living expenses from the athletic department, but not exactly a scholarship.

As others have said, college athletics takes a lot of time. It forces you to be very organized and prioritized about studying; little time for partying for serious students/athletes. That being said, athletes often have plenty of resources available to them such as tutors and study centers that are harder to come by for students not on a team.  I don't recall much lolling around or partying.

What I would do the same--

*Choose my school mainly based on academics/location, NOT the athletics program. Esp. important if one ends up having to quite the team due to injury, burnout, or just finding it isn't a good fit. Then one can still enjoy studying at the school and living in the town/city.

*Be on a college team. Almost all my closest friends in college were teammates. We shared training and trips, even shared apartments in many cases. To this day we meet at races and remenisce.

What I would do differently--

*Much more carefully consider the match with the coach and the program; not be blinded by national ranking or a glorious athletic tradition. In my case, the program was very well-known nationally, but the women's side really was better at taking five-star atheletes and polishing them, not developing new talent. It was more oriented toward middle distance runners and the coach's training approach and philosophy didn't work well for me. There was also a personality conflict with the coach. I wasn't blameless--I could be a real hothead as a teenager; but from 20 years later, I can see it was mainly a matter of bad fit--I would have done much better in a smaller, distance-oriented program with an old-school type of coach (and in fact did so when I trained for the Olympic Trials marathon).

*Go to a school which offered me some form of athletic scholarship. In my case, not so much for financial reasons but to feel that my contributions were valued and appreciated. I consistently felt that whatever I did was not valued and I didn't get the individual attention that scholarship athletes had--to this day I don't know how much of that was reality and how much perception. Since I was generally one of the last two scoring members in XC, I was under a lot of pressure in every race but enjoyed little of the glory, even when we won a national championship. In retrospect, I should have gone to a smaller, less high-powered program where I could be a scholarship athlete and feel appreciated, as well as one where the coach's training philosophy better fit my physical needs and personality.

I'm going back quite a while- but I'm going to echo quite a few of hotrunners thoughts.

I went on recruiting trips to D3, 2 and 1 (not top schools.) 

I knew I wanted to study engineering.  I wasn't totally committed to swimming- but loved it so I wanted to.

My parents were not involved in sports much- they were very supportive but thought I was insane to get up and swim before school and didn't let me join USS til I got my license for that reason.  So, they did a road trip with me, but I pretty  much was all alone to talking to coaches. I remember being in a coach's office when he did the basic requirements speech and said "you need to have 700 on your SATs" and my mom freaked out and said - she didn't get 700 on the English part!

In retrospect I wish I had asked my USS coach to help me as he did with a lot of the other kids who's parents worked pretty closely with him.  I just don't feel like I asked the right questions- although I'm not sure it would have impacted my final choice.

I talked to one D3 coach (at a school I was already accepted to) who told me People here wouldn't like you - they don't like jocks.  So it was a huge mix of responses when I called the smaller schools.

In the end I chose to walk on to my state university team as it was the most financially feasibly option.  I talked to the coaches and went on a recruiting trip but didn't get $$$ for sports (did get academic money though.)

I ended up being one of the slower people on the team and also felt a little less of the team.  I guess if a good freshman class came in I could have fallen off the bottom of the depth chart.  I did have fun- but the program didn't really mesh well with me and I didn't really get any faster.

After two years I left to do a study abroad program and ended up transferring there.  I had a blast with that team traveling to meets- it was more like a club team.  It was a lot less pressure - if you had a big test you could skip workouts.  You didn't have to stay on campus over breaks to swim (which was fun in it's own rights and I have great memories of it.) 

I did learn a ton from my recruiting trips.  I remember being at northern D3 school and them showing me the tunnels they have for getting around in the winter and telling me you could go weeks without going outside.  That off hand comment scratched that school off the list for me immediately.

Good Luck! 

Varsity swimmer here.  Not fast enough to swim for D1.  A D3 school tried to recruit me, didn't materialize though.

I swam for a pretty good team at Univ. of Toronto.  In fact, their mens team won the canadian nationals this year.  I went to the school for the education, and the coach knew it.  He was happy with me training 5x / week, and honestly 5 was my better weeks.  Sometimes it was 3 / week during midterms.  Some years I did not swim and focused on school only.

My story is:  The years I swam were the years I did better in school.  By about 5% overall average.

When I finished my swim workout, I was dedicated to doing my homework right away in order to make the next morning's workout.

I didn't gel with the people there too much, but they were very sociable.

All I can add:

I had a friend who played water polo at a Big 10 school.  Architecture school took up too much time, so she quit water polo her junior year.

I got recruited to play football and wrestle at a couple of non-scholarship D3 schools and a small NAIA school.  The offers primarly came as a result of referals from my HS coaches.  It also helped that I attended a large HS that had some outstanding athletics and got a lot of attention in the media.  I never seriously considered football since I knew I was too small and slow to have a realistic shot at playing in college.  In fact, I was benched my senior year in HS to make way for some bigger and faster underclassmen.  I played on special teams, but only got to start a couple of games when the regular starters were injured. 

I chose the NAIA school for academic reasons.  I was accepted into the freshman honors program and they awarded me an "honorary" academic scholarship of $200/year.  I was ambivalent about wrestling, but the coach hounded me until I agreed to come out for the team.  I wrestled, but never really enjoyed it like I did in HS.  I had some nagging injuries and was assigned to a weight class that had me dropping about 15 lbs. Got tired of living on salads and cottage cheese.  I decided at the end of the wrestling season that I was done with it.   I walked onto the tennis team and actually had a decent year playing tennis.

After my freshman year I transferred to a Big Ten school to better pursue my academic major.  Over the summer I was surprisingly invited to walk on to the tennis team.   My biggest (& likely only) value to the team was that I was left-handed and had a pretty good slice serve.  My primary role was to hit left-handed slice serves to the varsity guys during practice and then act a ballboy during the actual matches.  The biggest "benefit" was that I got to time block my classes to keep my afternoons open for practice.  That actually turned out to be a big problem since several classes in my major area were only offered in the afternoon and conflicted with practice.  I finished out my sophomore year on the team, and was invited to come back again the next year (not always a sure thing), but declined and gave it up so I could concentrate on school.

If I had to do it over again I probably wouldn't have bothered with any of it, but then again I was a very mediocre athlete at best.

Mark