Greetings all! Yes, I found the other swim parenting thread, but it's two years old, so thought I'd start a different one.
Our daughter is currently a junior with decent swim times. We've started getting letters from D3 schools interested in her swimming for them. Thus, questions abound.
a) Is there such a thing as D2 schools? Our DD has great times (as a junior!) to place and in some instances win D3 meets right now, but she is nowhere near D1 times. Where is D2?
b) So far, the two states we want her to look at (Texas and Virginia) have many D3 schools, but only one total (in VA) state school. If you have a child going to a D3 private school, how much financial aid (percentage of total cost is fine) did you get from the school? (Yes, I know that D3 schools don't give athletic scholarships, but I'm learning, at least for other sports, they will find money to get your kid there.)
c) Does the financial support come with a guarantee to 4 years of support? What if my child gets injured?
d) Is there such a thing as financial support for College Club swimming? (I only just learned of CCS in another thread.)
e) Anything I'm not thinking of with respect to a child competing in a varsity sport in college? Holidays ruined? Required living arrangements? Practices taking precedence over studies? I don't even know where to begin.
I thank you all in advance. This'll be our first of four we're self-supporting. (Previous one used my GI Bill and the other two both joined the military.) Our current college kid knew exactly where he wanted to go and (thankfully) got accepted there. Our daughter isn't sure where she wants to go or exactly what she wants to study. (We've recommended a gap year and she is not for that at all!)
Cheers all and stay healthy!
As to question number “a,” yes there are D2 schools. In fact D2 Nationals begin on Wednesday:results.spireinstitute.org/.../
just some other observations:
1) if practice is taking precedent over studies, then the student athlete is doing it wrong (hence the “student” part comes first. That is, unless they plan to go pro in swimming, in which case the aforementioned practice might be more acceptable!
2) holidays aren’t necessarily ruined. I went to a D1 mid-major school (Davidson College) and for Fall Break, freshmen could go home but upper class men had to stay the four day weekend and train. We were released from workouts Tuesday morning of thanksgiving week, but if you had arrangements to be home earlier (because maybe you didn’t have tuesday classes) then they weren’t going to say “no,” but you were going to be required to train with your local club team. For Christmas break, we did training trip both ways: freshman/sophomore year it was after Christmas (reported back to school on like 12/27, with trip running like 12/29-1/6). Junior and senior year we had training trip before Christmas, from about 12/15-12/24. Honestly liked knocking it out before Christmas, but didn’t like traveling on Christmas Eve. Made getting flights home expensive. But then I could avoid spending my birthday on training trip (1/5). Funny story though my junior year I had to be on deck at 8:00 am 1/6 for practice and so it was my 21st birthday the night before. I was walking up the stairs returning from the bars as my mom came out of her room to wake me to catch my flight and she was like “oh good you are already up,” and I was like, “I never went to sleep.” Made the red-eye and practice. But it was rough ;)
As to question number “a,” yes there are D2 schools. In fact D2 Nationals begin on Wednesday:results.spireinstitute.org/.../
just some other observations:
1) if practice is taking precedent over studies, then the student athlete is doing it wrong (hence the “student” part comes first. That is, unless they plan to go pro in swimming, in which case the aforementioned practice might be more acceptable!
2) holidays aren’t necessarily ruined. I went to a D1 mid-major school (Davidson College) and for Fall Break, freshmen could go home but upper class men had to stay the four day weekend and train. We were released from workouts Tuesday morning of thanksgiving week, but if you had arrangements to be home earlier (because maybe you didn’t have tuesday classes) then they weren’t going to say “no,” but you were going to be required to train with your local club team. For Christmas break, we did training trip both ways: freshman/sophomore year it was after Christmas (reported back to school on like 12/27, with trip running like 12/29-1/6). Junior and senior year we had training trip before Christmas, from about 12/15-12/24. Honestly liked knocking it out before Christmas, but didn’t like traveling on Christmas Eve. Made getting flights home expensive. But then I could avoid spending my birthday on training trip (1/5). Funny story though my junior year I had to be on deck at 8:00 am 1/6 for practice and so it was my 21st birthday the night before. I was walking up the stairs returning from the bars as my mom came out of her room to wake me to catch my flight and she was like “oh good you are already up,” and I was like, “I never went to sleep.” Made the red-eye and practice. But it was rough ;)
