Not a Golden Ticket for Admission
Sooner or later, as the parent of a star athlete, you are going to hear about the "edge" your child supposedly has over the competition for college admission. Whether the end of the rainbow holds a pot-of-gold scholarship from a Division I school or admission to an Ivy League college, sports success carries more weight, on average, in college admissions and non-need-based scholarship awards than being the son or daughter of an alumnus/ae or a member of a minority. The practice may be unfair, but most will argue that college recruits did not invent the system and would be foolish not to take advantage of it.
But athletics is not the golden ticket to college admission that some make it out to be. A top ranking in a national sport is no substitute for strong SATs, grades, and academic recommendations. And really, why should it be? A college education can lead to many things: intellectual discovery, vocational training, emotional and social maturation. In a few sports, and for a small minority, exposure gained through college sports opens the gates to a professional athletic career. Most experts agree, however, that in such cases, the experience has lost most of its integrity and value.
Five questions to ask
There are five major questions that parents of elite athletes need to answer in the last two years of high school:
Should they engage in "process parenting" or "outcome parenting?"
How much of the family's financial and other resources should they spend on their star athlete?
What division (I, II, or III) will provide the best fit for their child in terms of sports versus academics and financial aid?
Should they hire a consultant to assist them and their child in the college recruitment process?
When is it appropriate to postpone college by using the so-called "gap year"?
1. Process parenting versus outcome parenting
Youth sports experts, like Brooke de Lench [1], author of Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports [2] generally agree that parents of all athletes, regardless of their skill level or talent, should emphasize the process and the journey, rather than the outcome. While parents should allow their athletic children to dream and think big, they need to remain positive in the face of losses and other setbacks. Their focus should be on hard work, fitness, training, skill development and the sheer joy of sports.
The more things change ...
At some point, however, usually early in high school, elite athletes begin to be singled out, not just for their prowess on the field or the court, but for their potential as professional athletes or college players. Suddenly, it is a whole different ball game. A schedule that called, let's say, for three national events per year suddenly requires at least six such events if the athlete is to get proper "exposure." To be successful at these events, the athlete must train almost every day, preferably with a coach who understands the stakes. The drain on a family's time, financial resources and emotional balance suddenly balloons.
"But it's worth it!" say the same experts who so recently were advising parents to eschew outcomes. "Think of the scholarship! Think of the edge in college admissions! Think of the possibility of a pro career!"
Yet most young athletes regard their sports involvement the same way they always have. Even a group of baseball players selected for an international all-star tournament reported their prime motivation as "having fun," with "challenge" second. Rankings, future prospects, and even winning were far down the list.
Such surveys suggest that the only reason young athletes jump onto the college recruitment bandwagon is as a means to an end: they realize that by doing so, their parents will be more willing to shell out the extra money that translates into more fun and greater challenges for them: more coaching, more travel, more competition.
Falling into a trap
Thus, it's easy for a parent to fall into the trap of feeling that the emphasis has shifted appropriately from process to outcome, from free and easy sports participation to the serious business of college recruitment and athletics.
In doing so, parents may be blind to the fact that the shift from process parenting to outcome parenting poses a number of risks:
Viewing involvement in terms of return on investment. That the reward of a college scholarship will not justify the risk in terms of the additional investment of time and energy required;
Increased chance of burnout. That, as the emphasis shifts from having fun and skill development to winning and impressing college scouts, the athlete will be under more and more pressure to achieve athletic success. The more he sees sports as a job, the less he sees participation as being for fun, the greater the chances of burnout;
Bests interests of the child ignored. Parenting that focuses on the outcome increase the risk that decisions about the athlete's well-being and college choice will not be made on the basis of her overall best interest but be skewed towards the choice that brings the most return on investment and ego gratification for the parent (e.g. biggest scholarship, most prestigious school).
Having fun should always remain the goal
In the end, whatever the pressures of college recruitment, the young baseball players who were surveyed have it right: fun and challenge - the process - must always remain the priority. What is the final "outcome," after all? Sports and fitness are good, not for a four-year stretch, but for a lifetime.
2. Money Matters
When my son Dan was playing tennis at a national level during high school, we tried to limit his annual budget to $15,000 - already a good chunk of a single working parent's take-home income. Yet compared with other elite athletes' expenditures, our budget seems laughable.
Some examples:
Tennis. According to Tim Donovan of Donovan Tennis Strategies, a college recruitment consulting service, most tennis families spend upwards of $25,000 a year for their son or daughter to compete at a national level. A recent article in The New York Times on rising tennis star, Donald Young, doubled that figure for athletes competing internationally.
Skiing. Skiers can easily spend $40,000 per year according to a representative of the U.S. Ski Association.
Golf. The United States Golf Association (USGA) figures it cost about $20,000 a year for young golfers to compete, but this figure does not include the costs of a parent or coach traveling with the child to tournaments, which can add $15,000 to the tab.
Sports Academies: Sports academies, which provide one-stop-shopping for elite athletes by bundling school, coaching, and competition into a single fee, begin at $36,000 per year and rise to at least $50,000 when travel to national competitions is included.
Between a rock and a hard place
If, as a parent, you try saying "no" to any of this, you face the domino effect of outcome sports parenting: if Jennifer doesn't play the qualifying competition, she can't be eligible for the regional competition, where she needs to place in order to gain a berth in the national competition, where college coaches circle like hawks over the choicest recruits.
The competition, meanwhile, have brought in a top-ranked coach along with perhaps a sports psychologist and personal trainer, so if the lower-level events are to have the desired outcome, you had better get people of similar caliber on board before your outlay proves fruitless.
Scholarships
There is help out there, certainly. The American Junior Golf Association dispenses about $230,000 in need-based aid to around 60 young golfers, about $4,000 each. Other national associations have similar scholarship programs; my son, Dan, for instance, received a full scholarship to a tennis camp at Harvard, though we needed to find a place for him to stay. A former director of a national sports academy told me recently that he often found $1,000 somewhere in the school's funds to help a student whose parents could not afford a particularly important competition.
But the big money, in both association and commercial sponsorship, goes to athletes who have already demonstrated potential, which means their families have already devoted significant resources to the elite sport in question.
Avoiding "buyer's remorse"
Perhaps you earn a middle-class income. Perhaps your other children need your time and support. Perhaps, you think to yourself, this sport is indeed elite, not just athletically but economically as well. Perhaps you find yourself explaining to Jennifer that the college-recruitment process helping to maintain such relentless competition is not worth your taking out a second mortgage or moving the whole family to Florida.
"But it's not fair!" she'll exclaim. "I'm just as good as those kids! I need this level of competition! You're supposed to be supporting me!"
Or perhaps you have made all these sacrifices, and Jennifer's performance seems lackluster. She's distracted by a new social life, or not eating properly [3]. Her high-level coach accepts your checks but expresses doubts about her future.
"I'm spending half my income on you," you hear yourself saying, "and all my free time. Now you'd better grab the attention of a college coach, or the whole thing's a waste!"
There are no easy solutions to the money dilemma. In other countries, elite athletes - many of whom end up with scholarships to American universities - are supported by state funding, a system that has its own drawbacks. In America, the burden falls on non-profit associations and on families.
The only sound advice is this: avoid buyer's remorse. Work with your athletic child to find the best level of support that you can give without regretting the outcome and that he can accept without feeling he has been denied a future in the sport.
3. Division I, II, or III: Which will provide the best fit for your child?
Financial Aid
Colleges and universities that are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) are classified into three divisions: I, II, and III, with the classification based primarily on whether and how the school awards scholarships to incoming student-athletes.
In theory,
Division I: are generally large universities and set both minimum and maximum financial aid award limits for student-athletes.
Division II schools have maximum award limits and generally attract local or in-state student-athletes.
In practice, however, these distinctions don't mean a lot. Many Division III schools find ways to supply merit scholarships to promising student-athletes, while, contrary to popular myth, most awards at Division I schools do not come close to covering tuition, room and board.
Athletics versus academics
What really sets schools in Division I apart from their Division II and III counterparts is the greater emphasis on athletics over academics:
Division I (athletics are a priority): Athletes train in their sport throughout the year and compete and travel during at least half the academic year. The athletics department generally offers academic support via study halls and tutors to help students balance their academic and athletic schedules. But student-athletes at Division I institutions can expect the demands of their sport to equal or exceed the demands of academics, and they generally view their athletic participation as their primary or sole extracurricular activity.
Division II (community-focused balance of athletics and academics): Athletes at Division II schools are often commuter students or students focused on a vocational degree. Their sports involvement is generally confined to competition against other regional institutions.
Finding the right balance
Between 3% and 11% of high-school athletes compete at the college level, so the recruiting process, regardless of whether one is talking about D-I, D-II, or D-III, is already a winnowing process. The important factor, for most elite athletes, should not be the elusive scholarship, which may crop up or disappear regardless of division level. Rather, students and parents should assess optimal size and type of institution, the student's academic interests and preparedness, the student's commitment to his or her sport; and the student's other extracurricular interests. As the recruiting season heats up for high-school juniors and seniors, keeping such priorities in mind can be a huge challenge.
4. Hiring a Consultant
Pros
College recruiting is a complex process for the elite athlete, rife with rules, cautions, and the vicissitudes of college recruiters. If your son or daughter is a highly ranked athlete, your mailbox will bulge with enthusiastic letters from coaches all over the country, each promising the moon-along with an iron-clad contract.
At the same time, your teenager is flexing the muscles of independence. Lost as they may be in the maze of college recruiting, they may not want you to hand them the string that will help them find their way out.
One solution is to hire a consultant who will help the student-athlete sort through recruitment offers, initiate and respond to contacts with coaches, prepare a resume of athletic accomplishments, and handle official and unofficial visits to colleges.
Tim Donovan of Donovan Tennis Strategies cautions parents against pushing their athletic children toward highly ranked colleges that may not be the best fit. In many of the families who seek his services, he says, "It's the parents driving the kids. They have this quest for the kid to be a special athlete, for bragging rights."
Donovan himself is happiest "when I can help kids who were under the radar, great student-athletes who didn't have the exposure." Although presenting a student's record is about "enhancing chances" for admission and financial aid, the greatest benefit for the young person working with a strategist may to relieve the pressure from within the family when it comes to college recruiting.
Cons
Yet another expense: Paying a consultant constitutes yet another expense at a time when the family's budget may already be spread thin.
Possible lack of expertise or personal service. With the exception of sport-specific consultants like Donovan, most college-recruiting consultants are spread thin and know less about the sport in question than the athlete and his family.
Unrealistic promises. "Bragging rights" apply not only to families, but to consulting services as well, so that athletes and families need to be both careful and assertive about finding the right fit for the individual, regardless of promises, rankings, or other lures.
Finally, for parents of elite athletes, who have necessarily remained heavily involved in the logistics of their children's lives throughout their growth years, handing off the applications process to the student himself may be even harder than for parents of other high-school juniors and seniors. Bear in mind that most athletes who drop off college teams do so because they did not choose that team, or even the institution, in the first place. Allowing your child to take the reins of the college recruitment process, even if he makes a poor decision, may be the best thing you can you do for your child.
5. The gap year
Reasons to wait
Postponing college for a year by utilizing the so-called gap year between high school and college is on the rise, particularly among athletes, and it's not hard to understand why:
Many young athletes, focused on their sport, mature more slowly, emotionally and socially, than their peers;
The pressures of national competition can take their toll academically, so that many elite athletes need more preparation for college-level work; and
College freshman athletes, especially international students, tend to be a year older than their peers, so the competition may be better trained and more mature physically than your high-school graduate.
The NCAA, worried about issues of amateurism in college athletics, continues to take steps to limit the age at which a recruit can begin college, so that for most elite sports, college admissions should be postponed for no more than one year.
Meanwhile, more and more boarding schools and sports academies across the country are offering special academic programs and athletic schedules for student athletes "in the gap." While these programs may add yet another expense to the mounting cost of parenting an elite athlete, there are also scholarships available for many promising athletes.
Remember: Gap-year grades don't count
Worth bearing in mind when making a decision about a gap year is that a student's high-school transcript closes upon graduation. Gap-year grades can be sent to college admissions offices, but they cannot be used to boost a sagging high-school GPA. If you are worried that your daughter will not be NCAA eligible academically, or feel that the dual pressures of academics and athletics are seriously hurting her academic performance, she may be better off changing schools and repeating a year rather than taking the gap option.
Peer pressure is a factor
Students themselves, of course, may resist the prospect of either repeating a year or taking a gap year. Many if not most of the academically successful student-athletes I have taught came to college after taking a gap year. And yet, when it came time for my own son to choose, I allowed him to enter college at a young age and with an academically weak record rather than push the gap-year option. The expectation of entering college at the same time as one's high-school peers is a strong one. A reluctant gap-year student may also lose interest in his sport when it's taken out of the context of peer competition and placed solely on a college-recruitment track.
A highly personal decision
Thus, electing a gap year is a highly personal choice that students and families should arrive at together. The option can be richly rewarding but should be approached openly, early, and with an eye toward the student's overall well-being, not just her chances at high-level college recruitment.
Links:
[1] https://momsteam.com/node/127
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Home-Team-Advantage-Critical-Mothers/dp/0060881631/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3237502-3788914?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193861788&sr=8-1
[3] https://momsteam.com/node/938
[4] https://momsteam.com/successful-parenting/parenting-elite-athletes/college-recruiting-for-the-elite-athlete
[5] https://momsteam.com/successful-parenting/parenting-elite-athletes/travel-academics-international-competition/raising-an-
[6] https://momsteam.com/team-of-experts/brooke-de-lench/editorials/team-cuts-just-as-painful-for-elite-and-youth-athletes