• Athletes outpace regular students in graduation rates. Many people make such a fuss about student-athlete graduation rates, but that's because they never know what the graduation rates are for non-athletes, the kids who have 30-40 extra hours a week to study and do work and still can't graduate. Read Article
• Article on Division 3 Athletics. Read Article. Sometimes I get nervouse when I read articles like these because they make it seem like you get a Ferrari and a flat screen TV if you play D1 athletics. In reality I played D1 baseball and I had to pay for my cleats and jacket and probably a few other things that I don't remember. It can really depend on the sport and program you play at and how much money is floating around that particular program.
• This article pretty much sums up the problem with many recruiting services across the country. One, you have a company that signed up a player with a 1.4 GPA which is just ridiculous. Two, you have that same company merely mailing out 30 highlight DVD's, the question is what schools are they going to and why and why aren't you capable of sending mail on your own? And thirdly, you have the high school coach that swoops in at the end when it's too late and says, gee I wish I knew my player needed help with recruiting and gee, parents are fully capable of doing everything on their own in the recruiting process. Read Article

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NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES
(D1) The NCAA has placed Weber State University on two years of probation and has restructured the university’s self-imposed financial aid reduction in a case that involved impermissible extra benefits to student-athletes in 15 varsity sports over a three-year period.

Marian College (Indiana) will start a new varsity football program starting in the 2007 season.

The University of Tulsa broke ground on a new 30,000 square foot athletic complex. The facility will largely be used for football.

(D1) In order to crack down on cheating, the University of New Hampshire is testing new software that cross references papers students submit with information on the world wide web to sniff out students that are turning in work that is not really their own. Good luck with all that.

(D2) West Virginia University Institute of Technology has announced that it will leave NCAA Division II and the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to affiliate next year with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA)

(D2) Florida Gulf Coast University announced January 17 that it will move to reclassify its sports programs in Division I, effective in 2007.

(D2) Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania announced January 31 that it will discontinue eight varsity sports. The affected programs are men’s golf, men’s and women’s swimming and diving, water polo, field hockey, men’s and women’s tennis, and wrestling. All eight will be terminated at the end of the spring semester. Slippery Rock will continue to sponsor 15 varsity sports. Student-athletes affected by the decision will continue to receive financial aid for the duration of their eligibility, provided they continue to meet NCAA and institutional academic standards.

(D1)The NCAA has placed Florida A&M University on four years of probation and has imposed a number of other penalties for lack of institutional control and about 200 other violations in 15 sports. Penalties include Four years of probation, which will end January 31, 2010, A reduction in grants-in-aid in all 15 sports on the following schedule: baseball grants are reduced by three in 2005-06; grants in men’s and women’s basketball, women’s bowling, softball and women’s volleyball are reduced by one in 2005-06; football grants will be reduced by six in 2005-06, two in 2006-07, three in 2007-08 and three in 2008-09; men’s and women’s swimming each reduced grants by two in 2005-06; grants in men’s tennis are reduced by 1.5 in 2005-06; men’s track is losing one grant in both 2005-06 and 2006-07; and women’s track is losing two grants in 2005-06 and one in 2006-07, Football practice time was reduced by 20 hours in 2005-06 ( that’s about the only thing I would be excited about),

The NCAA has placed Millersville University of Pennsylvania on probation for two years and adopted a number of penalties that were self-imposed by the institution in a case involving major violations in its baseball program. Penalties include the following…The new baseball coaching staff is prohibited from conducting expense-paid recruiting visits until January 1, 2007. The new baseball coaching staff is prohibited from off-campus recruiting until July 30, 2006. For two years, the average athletics grant for baseball student-athletes will be reduced 10 percent below the average for grants awarded the last four years. Further, the largest single grant for the 2005-06 and 2006-07 academic years may not exceed $4,300. The baseball team is prohibited from competing in the conference and NCAA postseason tournaments for the 2006 season.

Choosing Schools By Division is the wrong way to choose!
I have seen an increase lately in the number of people (kids especially) who are lumping all programs into one level so I wanted to address that in more detail.

Many parents and high school athletes simply assume that if they cannot play D1, they can play D2, and if they cannot play D2, they can play D3.

After D1 football and D1 basketball, I would ask you to please not evaluate any programs simply by division. There are so many other factors that contribute to a team’s talent level, and unless you evaluate a variety factors, you will find a lot of parity amongst schools that compete at different divisions and you will find many differences between individual sports at a given school (meaning one school could have a very talented tennis team, but their swimming team might not be so good).

Without factoring in a school's individual success, strength of their league, geographic location, and the climate they play in, there is no way you can choose a school (or any school for that matter) simply by what division they are. So how can you help determine individual skill-level?

Individual Success – Some programs, regardless of division have built up a reputation and have a track record for being successful and because of this, these teams continue to attract talented recruits who individually want to compete at a high level. In 1989 Southern Maine University made their first appearance in the Division 3 World Series. Since then the team has made 5 more appearances and won twice (91 and 97). This success has put Southern Maine on the map for local New England baseball players who want to play and compete at a very high level and has led talented baseball players to the school year-after-year.

But if you want to talk success, then the conversation starts and ends with the Kenyon College (D3) swimming program. The Kenyon College men’s swimming team just wrapped up their 26th straight D3 NCAA swimming championship. The women are not far behind and just won their 20th NCAA championship in a row. For fun, I decided to compare some top times from the championship to some top times for Stanford University, a D1 swimming program. Kenyon’s Mark Brooks swam a 100-meter freestyle in a time of 44.23. The top time on Stanford for the 2003-2004 season (according to their website) was 44.06. While Brooks was a shade under the best Stanford time, his time was faster than the fastest time posted by 10 other Stanford swimmers this year. His 200 individual medley time was 1:47.72, a second slower than the best Stanford time, but faster than 10 other Stanford swimmers. Elliot Rush, another Kenyon swimmer, swam the 500 freestyle in a time of 4:24:57, good enough to beat 14 of the best times turned in by Stanford swimmers this year.

The moral of the story? Unless you evaluate an individual team's success, you cannot simply assume that all D1 are better than all D3 teams. In this case, Kenyon College a D3 school, has some extremely talented swimmers on their team, who, had they chosen to, could have swam at a top D1 level. Why did they choose to go to a D3 school? Well, I have no idea, personal preference maybe? The question is not why are they there, but how does their presence affect your recruiting process? And the answer is, unless you are extremely talented, there are many D3 programs that you will not be able to play at and some D3 teams have D1 caliber players.

Strength of league – Most leagues have teams consisting of schools that play at a similar level. This isn’t an accident. While there always seems to be one dominant team in a league, by and large the level of competition should be roughly the same across the league. This is usually because the schools share several common traits that attract roughly the same type of athletes to the school. At Fairfield, we played in the MAAC, which consisted of Fairfield, Iona, Manhattan, St. Peters, Lemoyne, Canisius, Sienna, and Niagra. Now, what do these schools have in common? They are all located in the Northeast, in close proximity to each other, most are Catholic and some are Jesuit, and they are all roughly the same size in terms of the number of students. While individual teams at certain schools are sometimes more successful, by and large, if you have the skills to play athletics at one of these schools, you probably have the ability to play at any of these schools. If that weren’t the case, then the league would not be very fair. Now, there are always exceptions and I will give you an example. Now that a few schools from the Big East are moving to the ACC, several teams are going to discover just how talented other teams are in certain sports.

Let's look at a few talented teams in the ACC. For basketball the conversation starts and ends with Duke and North Carolina, which have teams that are routinely ranked near the top in the country. Baseball, well, last time I checked Clemson, Georgia Tech, and Florida State fielded some pretty good baseball teams, ditto for Golf as some of these schools attract the top college golfers in the country if not the world. Soccer, well North Carolina has probably the most famous women’s soccer program in the country. So what does all of this mean? Nothing if you are the University of Miami and are moving to the ACC, but for a team like Boston College, it could mean some culture shock for your athletic teams for a few years. Boston College will have trouble competing against teams in the ACC for many sports. That is not an insult, it’s just that many of these ACC schools attract a different type of athlete, due to their past success and location (i.e. warm weather) If you are a top golfer or baseball player do you want to go to Boston College where your season is played in March and April and it is usually struggling to break 40 degrees out and the field is cold, hard, and wet? Or do you want to go to Clemson where it is sunny and 70 in the spring. Having tried out for a college team in Orlando and played in snow flurries in games in Connecticut, do I need to point out which climate is more suitable for baseball and many other sports?

Geographic location – Some states simply have more participation in one sport over another, which contributes to the success of individual teams within that state and the state of Ohio is an excellent example for football. Mount Union College, a small D3 school in Ohio in the fall of 2003 had victories of 58-0 and 66-0, had won 46 straight games and 100 of its last 101 games at one point. That my friends is a D3 powerhouse, and they have many players that could compete at the D1 and D2 level, but chose not to. Ohio is a hotbed for high school football and there is another strong D3 team called Ohio Northern. Ohio Northern has 100 players listed on its roster and only 4 are from outside of Ohio. This is a good example of a coach not having to do a lot of outside recruiting because there is so much talent in his own state. If you wanted to play football for Ohio Northern or Mount Union and lived in say, New Hampshire, you'd better have some compelling information and skills for the coach to recruit you. The Ohio State men’s hockey team (a D1 program) on the other hand shows us another perspective. In 2003 the hockey roster listed ZERO players from Ohio, and Ohio is obviously not known for their youth hockey programs. It’s no secret either that Florida is filled with many talented high school baseball players, and the majority of the baseball programs in Florida (regardless of division) are very competitive. The next section will illustrate this point.

Climate – Is it any surprise that baseball teams in Florida compete at a high level? Not only is baseball the most popular youth sport in Florida, but the players get to play and practice 365 days out of the year if they want to. So not only are there a high number of baseball players in the State, but talented baseball players. Due to Florida’s size, the number of talented baseball teams, and Florida’s tuition reciprocity program at state schools for academic achievers, there is little incentive for local players to leave the state to play. Sure, we have all heard of the success of the Miami Hurricanes baseball program, but smaller schools like Rollins College (D2), Florida Southern (2), or Nova Southeastern (D3), attract extremely talented players as well; while many of these teams are “D2” or “D3”, realistically, you have to be a top D1 caliber player to attend these schools. The lure of playing baseball in Florida for many recruits from other states is a powerful one. Unfortunately, many players coming from colder climates do not understand the talent needed to play college baseball in Florida. Other states have similar patterns. In the New England area, hockey is king and the majority of schools that have competitive hockey programs can put their rosters together with local players from the 100 plus private schools that attract top hockey players from around the country. Ditto for Minnesota and hockey, the majority of schools that compete in hockey in Minnesota have no problem finding local players or players just over the border in Canada. California is another state with nice weather and a high participation in athletics. California also has a huge state school system and many coaches at all levels do not have to recruit far from their state, and since their scholarship dollars stretch further with in-state players, there is little incentive to leave the state to recruit if they can find the talent locally.

Obviously there are many factors to evaluate when trying to select individual colleges that might be a good fit for you. This is why simply choosing schools by division does not work. It is also one of the reasons why sending mass marketing emails or letters to college coaches does not work either. If you are having trouble trying to figure out the individual talents of a particular team, ask the coach and they may be able to explain the level they play at in more detail.

EARLY ACTION
This year a small D1 school in New England switched their early application process from early decision to early action. This had a huge impact on applications and the school received over 5,000 early action applications from students. Normally in a given year the school receives between 6,000 and 7,000 applications in the entire year. One student-athlete I knew applied early action and while he had good grades, 1190 SAT, 3.0+ GPA his grades and scores probably looked extremely average or a little below the other 4,999 students that applied early action. This student was deferred and that was with the baseball coach supporting his application as a recruited athlete. In reality the school received so many more applications than in expected, they ended up deferring almost everyone because they only accept a small amount of students each year and they had to wait for the regular decision pool. This is one of those events that you cannot plan for and that is why it’s important to have a backup plan and a backup-backup plan.

Dear David,

Thank you very much. I read your book from cover to cover for several hours last night and truly appreciate all the insight you provide.

My daughter is a Junior this year at ******* High School in ********, NY. She plays many sports extremely well (varsity field hockey goalie who has started for 2 years and will start again her Sr year, currently a varsity volleyball libero in sectional competition, and travel club soccer for 7 years.

She would love to make field hockey her sole focus in college.

We have not compiled her resume yet, but we do have an incredible highlights tape of the numerous saves she made at the ******** semi-finals competition this past November at ********* NY.

To be honest, I am somewhat intimidated by the mothers who tell me she has no chance of playing in college because she has not played club field hockey (choosing instead to stick with her year-round travel soccer club). However, as a field hockey goalie who uses her feet more than her stick, She feels that soccer has kept her footwork focused and her speed and physical fitness at an absolute peak.

They joked at the field hockey banquet about Her unique running style, but admitted that she can sprint faster than anyone on the team (and that is in full goalie gear)!

Anyway, sorry to ramble on. I am trying to organize my thoughts so that I can help her take the next step and call the coaches of the schools that she is interested in visiting.

Thank you again for writing such a wonderful book!!! I found out about your book by doing a general search on the internet when I was trying to help my daughter understand the myriad of NCAA rules. I came across your site and was impressed with all the information you provided online.

Dear Parent

Thank you for the kind words. As for those other parents who think their recruiting process is all set because they play club field hockey, best of luck to them. You are way ahead of them in terms of the knowledge needed to run an effective college selection and athletic recruiting process. While they are busy waiting for college coaches to show up at their games to discover their daughters, you are busy putting together a detailed video and resume and contacting schools you are interested in. College coaches don't simply recruit athletes that play club ball, they recruit athletes that have the ability to play at the next level and there are many ways to convey your skills to college coaches. There are several hundred colleges where you can possibly play at and if the girls on your daughters team are lucky, maybe 5% of the field hockey coaches across the country might actually see them play.
 
 
 
 
 

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