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!
Ugh, I thought I had replied! Sorry I'm late to. Anyway, we're a year behind, but one of mine is pretty solidly in the D1 category. The other one is potentially where yours is. At any rate, there are two paths to consider - solo or using a recruiting service. We've been going solo, but have had a couple of discussions with a recruiting service, and are probably going to use it. In my case, I'll be using it because they told my daughter (the D1 one) EXACTLY what I have been telling her, but she won't listen to me.:frustrated: But for the other one, I think it will be very helpful in teaching us more about exposure since she isn't going to national level meets. We have been talking to NCSA. If you would like to offline about that, shoot me a message.
Before getting into your questions, a wee bit more background. Kids have had three coaches over the years who have been involved in high level D1 swimming. One was a scholarship swimmer for a couple of years, one was a walk on for a year, and one finished his eligibility. So some of my anecdotes are based on feedback from them, and not first hand knowledge, but it comes into play for my family, so I consider it. This is in addition to fellow swim parents who are friends who ahve been through this, or are going through it, now.
On the solo thing, I have spent a fair amount of time on www.collegeswimming.com. You can go iin there and do a search for colleges, putting in all kinds of criteria, and find out where you fit, and all of that. You can filter by state, division level, etc. For example, in your case, there are no D2 schools in VA, but there is one in TX - www.collegeswimming.com/.../
Injuries/guarantees. That I don't know. I know that in major sports like football, some of them do, and some don't. Many by conference. My alma mater left the SEC in 1964 because the SEC refused to adopt a measure that would guarantee the scholarships for four years. Coach Dodd's stance was that if a kid wasn't cutting it, it was the fault of teh coaches for not properly evaluating him. COnversely, one of my girls' early coaches had been a scholarship swimmer here at UT (TN), but had her scholarship taken away when she ended up injured (shoulder - repetitive use, it was swimming related). That is how UT and many other schools just roll, and that is going to be one criterion we will use to eliminate schools.
Probably some support for club swimming, but not a lot. I played club baseball in college. We got a few hundred bucks, maybe. We got the baseball team's old jerseys. But we had to fend for ourselves for most things like practice fields, game fees, etc. We paid fees every year to participate, but they weren't bad. I would imagine that the biggest thing would be access to the pool. If the school can give you access to its pool, then you should be golden. I'd be surprised if you had to pay for access, as some sort of access is usually part of general fees. As for a coach, I don't know, my club team was self coached.
The above paragraph about 4 year/injury will probably align pretty much with the swim/study question. Some programs will tell you if you are are scholarship that you are there to swim, period. I get the impression that D2 schools are not nearly as intense with that. But part of what you need to ask yourself is if swimming is to be done around all of the leisure activities, or are the leisure activities to be planned around swimming. Holidays, spring break, vacations, etc. Same thing as club level, the high performers on the team (at least ours) will work the other stuff around swimming. The families who swim around their other activities have kids who are not making the championship level meets.
Ugh, I thought I had replied! Sorry I'm late to. Anyway, we're a year behind, but one of mine is pretty solidly in the D1 category. The other one is potentially where yours is. At any rate, there are two paths to consider - solo or using a recruiting service. We've been going solo, but have had a couple of discussions with a recruiting service, and are probably going to use it. In my case, I'll be using it because they told my daughter (the D1 one) EXACTLY what I have been telling her, but she won't listen to me.:frustrated: But for the other one, I think it will be very helpful in teaching us more about exposure since she isn't going to national level meets. We have been talking to NCSA. If you would like to offline about that, shoot me a message.
Before getting into your questions, a wee bit more background. Kids have had three coaches over the years who have been involved in high level D1 swimming. One was a scholarship swimmer for a couple of years, one was a walk on for a year, and one finished his eligibility. So some of my anecdotes are based on feedback from them, and not first hand knowledge, but it comes into play for my family, so I consider it. This is in addition to fellow swim parents who are friends who ahve been through this, or are going through it, now.
On the solo thing, I have spent a fair amount of time on www.collegeswimming.com. You can go iin there and do a search for colleges, putting in all kinds of criteria, and find out where you fit, and all of that. You can filter by state, division level, etc. For example, in your case, there are no D2 schools in VA, but there is one in TX - www.collegeswimming.com/.../
Injuries/guarantees. That I don't know. I know that in major sports like football, some of them do, and some don't. Many by conference. My alma mater left the SEC in 1964 because the SEC refused to adopt a measure that would guarantee the scholarships for four years. Coach Dodd's stance was that if a kid wasn't cutting it, it was the fault of teh coaches for not properly evaluating him. COnversely, one of my girls' early coaches had been a scholarship swimmer here at UT (TN), but had her scholarship taken away when she ended up injured (shoulder - repetitive use, it was swimming related). That is how UT and many other schools just roll, and that is going to be one criterion we will use to eliminate schools.
Probably some support for club swimming, but not a lot. I played club baseball in college. We got a few hundred bucks, maybe. We got the baseball team's old jerseys. But we had to fend for ourselves for most things like practice fields, game fees, etc. We paid fees every year to participate, but they weren't bad. I would imagine that the biggest thing would be access to the pool. If the school can give you access to its pool, then you should be golden. I'd be surprised if you had to pay for access, as some sort of access is usually part of general fees. As for a coach, I don't know, my club team was self coached.
The above paragraph about 4 year/injury will probably align pretty much with the swim/study question. Some programs will tell you if you are are scholarship that you are there to swim, period. I get the impression that D2 schools are not nearly as intense with that. But part of what you need to ask yourself is if swimming is to be done around all of the leisure activities, or are the leisure activities to be planned around swimming. Holidays, spring break, vacations, etc. Same thing as club level, the high performers on the team (at least ours) will work the other stuff around swimming. The families who swim around their other activities have kids who are not making the championship level meets.
