Tue 23 Jun 2009
Parent ‘12 writes:
John McPhee has a piece on college recruiting for Lacrosse in this week’s New Yorker (May 25). Unfortunately, unless one has a subscription, only an abstract seems to be available on line.
EB is the only place that I read about college sports. Could anyone comment on “tryout camp,” which apparently is verboten. The college coaches’ (recruiters?) cryptic notes in the full article pull for an emotional response.
From the article:
THE SPORTING SCENE about college lacrosse tryouts. In early summer, high-school rising seniors from all over the United States play lacrosse for three days on the vast campus of the University of Maryland, at College Park. The two playing fields designated for lacrosse are parallel and generously fenced-parents are not permitted inside the fence. In the narrow strip that separates the fields college lacrosse coaches sit on folding chairs under large golf umbrellas, watching the games. They carry clipboards, rosters on the clipboards, and typically they are writing cryptic notes on the player’s performance. When the camp began, in 1985, it was called Top 205, because two hundred and five high-school players is the number it hoped to attract. It has two overlapping sessions now that draw some eight hundred and eighty high-school players, who are all here on their coaches recommendations. By N.C.A.A. rule, there can be no “tryout camp,” so 205 sends recommendation forms to every high-school lacrosse coach in the country, and the camp may accept, on a first-come-first-served basis, anyone who applies. The players want to come because they know who is going to be watching. Since the nineteen-eighties, the number of summer lacrosse camps has gone from under forty to more than four hundred. Tuition at the 205 camp is five hundred and ninety-five dollars. Some of the college coaches are far enough along in recruiting talks with some of these high school stars that they have come to regard them as theirs.
Think that this is outrageous? I guess that you won’t be sending your son to the Williams College football mini-camp (pdf) next month.
Our mini-camp is designed to give rising high school seniors the opportunity to experience a typical pre-season day of college football. This is a non-contact, one day mini-camp, which will focus on drills and techniques specific to each position.
Signing up for the camp requires an $85 check made out to Mike Whalen. Comments:
1) There is a great senior thesis to be written about the history of athletic recruiting at elite colleges.
2) The system is thorough and efficient. Coaches want to find the best players (subject to certain academic minimums) and players want to be found by coaches. The more that players and coaches know about each other beforehand, the better for all concerned. If anything, I would like to see this sort of matching extended beyond athletics. The world would be a better place if Williams faculty had more contacts with prospective students.
3) Just what is the relationship between Williams College and this football camp? Although there are many ways that something like this can be organized in a sensible and open manner, there are also many opportunities for abuse and self-dealing. Details, please.
UPDATE: Formatting of quote fixed.
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8 Responses to “Try Out Camp”
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1980 says:
Williams is not the only NESCAC school with a football camp – Amherst and Middlebury also run them.
For the lax article above, I was surprised to see that rising high school seniors attend this camp at Univ of Maryland. For D1 lax, commitments have already been made by then.
jeffz says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY
Williams — like Obama, a bridge between jocks and nerds?
newbie says:
I don’t see much of a correlation between that lax camp and the NESCAC football camps. The football camps include campus tours, admissions speakers and the like. We attended multiple football camps (Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams) and they are very good at helping the young men make a college choice. In addition to the camps, some schools simply invite the athletes for the ‘football overview’ (no camp) which features the football talk along with the tours and speeches (Tufts, Colby, Middlebury and Bowdoin are the ones we attended). My perspective is that they are much less about recruiting and more about ensuring that the student athletes make the right decision for themself. A great athlete will probably not be successful on the field for long if he doesn’t like the school, the campus or his field of study. There are other football camps in New England that are similar to the lax camp…but I wouldn’t put the Williams football camp in that category.
reader says:
This is so FAR from the whole picture – less than one pixel on the highest resolution monitor imaginable. One would hope that one trying to open a can of worms would have at least cursorily researched the process…or, not surprisingly, maybe not…
Ben Fleming says:
Overstating things much, reader?
reader says:
Don’t think so – history often repeats.
al says:
What, if anything, should be read into the fact that registration fees are paid directly to Coach Whalen rather than the College/Athletic Department?
Parent '12 says:
Dave- Under 2) … The world would be a better place if Williams faculty had more contacts with prospective students.
In the context of summer camps, are you suggesting that Williams should have a pre-college summer program? As I recall, some place like Putney used to run a summer program at Williams & maybe Amherst. But, I believe they had their own staff, not Williams faculty.
If, on the other hand, you mean faculty should meet prospective students. I know that they do that, either when students sit in on classes or have informational meetings.