Ivy League Athletics

Ivy League Athletic Recruiting

Ivy League Recruiting, Recruiting in Ivy League Athletics, Ivy League Athlete Recruitment

If you’re a prospective swimmer at Princeton, be sure to go through their meet results. Scan those heat sheets! See how your times stack up. Also, check out the school records to see where you stand. It’s one of the benefits of timed sports — athletes can know just where they stand (photo credit: Andreas Praefcke).

Want an Ivy League athletic recruiting tip? Do your research. What do we mean? Well, let’s say that you’re a rising high school senior who hopes to swim in college. Specifically, you’d like to attend Princeton. You’re a backstroker who goes a 1:02 in the 100 back and a 2:12 for the 200 back. Alright, so we’ve got some data points. Let’s start researching!

At Princeton University, the all-time varsity record in the 100 backstroke is held by Lisa Boyce. She swam the event in 54.10 (quite a bit faster than 1:02). But just because the record-holder has a faster time than you doesn’t mean in itself that the Princeton coach wouldn’t be interested. That would be quite foolish. But we’re just trying to give you some benchmarks to better understand where you fit in. With a time of 56.52, Karen Wang has the tenth fastest time in Princeton’s history. It’s still a far cry from 1:02, but at least we’re getting closer. In the 200 back, the all-time record is held by Meredith Monroe with a time of 1:55.58. Ming Ong went the tenth fastest time in Princeton’s history with a time of 2:03.02. So you’re nine seconds slower in the 200 than the tenth fastest swimmer in Princeton’s history.

Alright, but that’s just the fastest times in Princeton women’s swimming history. For the really great information, it’s important to check out the schedule / results. Under the results, you can see how your times compare to other Princeton swimmers in actual meets. You should literally be going through the heat sheets! We dove through a few meet results and after reviewing seed times and results of Princeton women’s swimmers, a 1:02 isn’t that far off the pace. But it’s not good enough to warrant getting recruited.

In a few meets, Princeton’s slowest 100 backstroker went a 1:01. In the 200 back in the few heat sheets we scanned through, Princeton’s slowest female swam a 2:10…so you’re definitely not that far off the pace. Again, not good enough to get recruited but, if you improve your times a little, you might be able to hold your own on the team.

Was this helpful as you begin to think about the Ivy League athletic recruiting process? Let us know your thoughts and ask your questions about Ivy League athletics here!

Athletes and College Admission

Athletic Ability and College Admission, Athletics and College Admissions, Athletics and Ivy League Admission

The Supreme Court is taking up affirmative action based on race. But what about based on athletic ability?

As the Supreme Court takes up affirmative action based on race once again, we wonder if the Supreme Court will ever take up Affirmative Action based on athletic ability. Recruited athletes, after all, have better odds in the college admissions process than minority applicants who don’t happen to be recruited athletes. Basketball and football players in particular gain admission to highly selective schools in spite of subpar grades and SAT scores. The standards are truly lowered for athletes. It might be trite to say but it’s trite because it’s true.

At Ivy League colleges, the eight member institutions use what is called the Academic Index system. Each of the eight Ivy League schools computes an average Academic Index for the student body. While each applicant to an Ivy League school has an Academic Index, the system was designed to measure recruited athletes against the rest of the incoming class. Recruited athletes must meet a minimum Academic Index to compete in the Ivy League (though indeed there have been exceptions to this rule in the past). And let’s just say that the Academic Index of a typical recruited basketball player isn’t exactly on par with the Academic Index of a first-chair violinist.

If you’re a top running back who is drawing the attention of a ton of Division I scouts and you’ve got respectable SAT scores and grades, you’ve got a much better shot at admission to an Ivy League school that a violinist with perfect or near-perfect SATs and high school grades. It is how it is, unfair as it may be. Do you think the Supreme Court of the United States should take up the issue of affirmative action for athletes? Do you think athletes should have just as good of a chance of admission as other applicants? This would inevitably hurt the quality of the teams universities could field. Your football team may not be as competitive. Does this change your opinion? Let us know your thoughts on athletes and college admission by posting below!

Harvard Superstar

Harvard Star, Harvard University Superstar, Harvard Star Athlete

Are there other overlooked players who could be pro sensations on Ivy League sports teams? Jeremy Lin makes you think there might be.

Harvard superstar Jeremy Lin’s story is just getting started. If you thought his numbers were going to drop when Amar’e Stoudemire returned to the lineup for the Knicks, you’d be mistaken. With Amar’e back last night against the Toronto Raptors, Jeremy Lin delivered perhaps his best performance yet. While torching Kobe’s Lakers for 38 points was impressive, last night, Jeremy Lin hit the game-winning three-point bucket to seal the Knicks’ sixth straight win — on the Raptors’ home court no less. It was a come-from-behind thriller orchestrated by the Harvard superstar.

For all the doubters who feel the sample size is too small to proclaim Lin a phenom just yet, Jeremy Lin continues to dazzle. He dished out a career high 11 assists last night to go along with 27 points on 9 for 20 shooting. He has become a floor general for the Knicks, the likes of which they’ve been needing for years — since the 80′s on Mark Jackson’s first stint in New York. Not Chris Childs, not Charlie Ward, surely not Stephon Marbury, not Nate Robinson, not Chauncey Billups…none of them proved to be the answer to the Knicks’ decades-long search for a quality point guard. But Harvard superstar Jeremy Lin seems to be that answer.

Do you think that there are other players who could become professional sensations overlooked in the Ivy League? Do you think pro scouts will now pay more attention to the Ancient Eight since Jeremy Lin has become such a global sensation? Do you think that Jeremy Lin is the exception to the rule or are there others like him in Cambridge, Hanover, New Haven, Ithaca, etc.? Let us know your thoughts on the subject by posting below. At The Ivy Coach, as you can see, we’ve got the Linsanity bug like the rest of the world!

NFL and Ivy League

Cornell’s Kevin Boothe will be representing the New York Giants again in the Super Bowl (photo credit: Marianne O’Leary).

This year’s NFL Playoffs has not been without Ivy Leaguers on numerous teams. Indeed, Super Bowl XLVI will feature an Ivy League grad (or grads) on both the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. For the Giants, Cornell’s Kevin Boothe as well as Brown’s Zak DeOssie mark their return to the Super Bowl. Once again, they’ll be facing the Pats, whom they upset a few years back in what would have been an undefeated season for New England.

According to the “Ivy League Sports” website, “A sixth-year NFL veteran, Boothe played in all 19 games this season, starting in nine during the regular season and all three in the postseason. DeOssie, a two-time Pro Bowl selection, has been a special teams mainstay for New York at long snapper. He successfully executed the snap on the game-winning field goal in overtime to defeat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game.”

And who else in these playoffs once competed in the Ancient Eight? Harvard grad Matt Birk is now in his 14th NFL season, competing for the Baltimore Ravens. Alright, so we’re nearing the end of this post and we haven’t yet specified who will be representing the Ivy League on the New England Patriots come Super Bowl Sunday. The answer would be Robert Kraft, the owner of the Pats, who is a Columbia University graduate as well as an alumnus of Harvard Business School. So not exactly a player but owners count, too!

Check out this post on the Ivy League and NFL.

Athletes from the Ivy League

What makes athletes from the Ivy League different from athletes from, say, the ACC, Big East, or SCC? Well, for one, Ivy League athletes don’t earn scholarships. They also have to meet certain admissions criteria (see our post on the Ivy League Academic Index) and they tend to be student-athletes more so than athletes who happen to also go to school. One great example of such an athlete is Andrew Goldstein, a graduate of Dartmouth College, where he played goalie on the lacrosse team and earned two honorable mention All-American nods.

Athletes from Ivy League, Ivy League Athletes, Athletes in Ivy League, Ivy League Athletics

Ivy League athletes like Andrew Goldstein are true examples of student-athletes with an emphasis on the student.

Andrew Goldstein is regarded as the first male professional team sport athlete in North America to be openly gay during his playing career. Goldstein played for two seasons of Major League Lacrosse – first with the Boston Cannons and then with the Long Island Lizards. Goldstein was openly gay at Dartmouth as this SportsCenter piece points out, a piece we at The Ivy Coach happened to have a whole lot to do with.

Since leaving lacrosse, Goldstein has become an outspoken advocate of not saying “gay” in a derogatory way in locker rooms. He’s also become a biology professor at UCLA and made a notable publication in the prestigious “Science” magazine by leading a team of researchers that found the possible cell of origin for prostate cancer. Wow.

Now that is an Ivy League athlete for you! Want to read more? Check out this piece on ESPN about the Ivy League athlete or this one on the historic nature of Goldstein’s example as an openly gay athlete.

Yale Athletic Recruiting

Yale athletic recruiting isn’t like athletic recruiting at other Ivy League colleges. Why not? Well, it can all be traced to the actions of Yale’s president, Richard Levin. If you’re familiar with “Moneyball,” one could well argue that Richard Levin is in some ways the Billy Beane of Ivy League sports. The Oakland A’s are a small market team with a payroll that simply doesn’t compare to teams like the Yankees. And yet for many years, Beane’s teams found a way to compete by going after players that other teams undervalued. He found a way to transform a subjective scouting system into an objective system built on the foundation of data-driven analytics. Richard Levin hasn’t gone this far but he has certainly put his stamp on Yale athletics.

Yale Athletes, Yale Recruiting, Yale Admission Recruiting, Yale Athletics, Athletes at Yale

This is the Columbia Men's Swim Team. How many swimmers do you count in this photo? We counted 33. And some may just not be in the photo. Now go to the Yale Men's Swim Team website. You'll notice only 29 names. Yale athletic teams are undermanned and this is an intentional admissions strategy from the very top (photo from Wikipedia).

When Yale’s athletic director, Tom Beckett, took office in 1994, Levin charged him with trimming athletic rosters across the board. He simply didn’t want so many admissions slots reserved for recruited athletes. Said Levin in 2010 to the “Yale Alumni Magazine,” “I have wanted to maintain a strong athletic program, and I believe we have demonstrated this can be accomplished without admitting quite so many athletes. We now admit significantly fewer recruited athletes than the Ivy League allows.”

Go to a swim meet, a volleyball match, a field hockey game at Yale and you’ll notice the disparity. There aren’t as many Yale athletes on the teams. Sometimes, you’ll see ten Yale athletes on one team and 20 Princeton athletes on another. The disparity is a big one! And yet Yale’s athletic teams are generally still all competitive. Many of the teams are in fact Ivy League champions. So the university is able to admit more students with grades and SAT scores to make the school one of the most academically competitive colleges – if not the most competitive college – in the country and at the same time field competitive athletic teams with fewer recruited athletes whose academic numbers are, overall, generally lower.

Check out the article in the “Yale Daily Herald” on Yale Athletic Recruiting and have a look at this post on Ivy League Athletic Recruits.

A preseason poll forecasting the seasons of Ivy League football teams has come out this week and the University of Pennsylvania has been projected to win the Ivy League, collecting 12 of 17 first-place votes. Following Penn is Harvard and then Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia, Princeton, and Cornell, respectively. Penn has won the last two Ivy League titles so it is no surprise that they’ve been projected to earn another championship. They also boast a 15-game winning streak in Ivy League play, a streak spanning over two football seasons.

And now for some Ivy League football trivia to get you ready for the upcoming season! Post your answers below!

- Which Ivy League college boats the most Ivy League football championships?

A.) Penn

B.) Harvard

C.) Cornell

D.) Dartmouth

- In one of the greatest upsets of the 20th century, this Ivy League college won the 1934 Rose Bowl over Stanford University thanks to a trick play known as KF-79 by QB and eventual MVP Cliff Montgomery.

A.) Cornell

B.) Columbia

C.) Harvard

D.) Princeton

- The starting QB for the Buffalo Bills attended this Ivy League college.

A.) Harvard

B.) Dartmouth

C.) Brown

D.) Yale

- Jay Fiedler starred at QB for this Ivy League university.

A.) Yale

B.) Dartmouth

C.) Columbia

D.) Princeton

Brown University Athletes

In a previous post, we told you about how Brown University administrators decided to eliminate its men’s and women’s fencing, men’s wrestling, and women’s ski teams beginning this 2011-2012 academic year. We told you about how the university has a difficult time attracting recruits from middle-class backgrounds, in part because Brown’s endowment is the smallest in the Ivy League. And we told you how back in 2002 when Dartmouth College decided to eliminate its men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams, students, alumni, and parents fought back. Their fight ended up being successful, endowing the Dartmouth College teams for at least another ten years. It seems Brown University students, alumni, and parents are fighting back as well!

Brown University Athletics, Ivy League Athletes, Ivy League Athletics, Ivy League Athletic Cuts, Brown Athletic Cuts

Brown University athletes can rejoice...temporarily. The fencing, wrestling, and women's ski teams that were cut got a temporary reprieve.

According to the “Brown Daily Herald,” “The men’s and women’s fencing teams, men’s wrestling team and women’s ski team will be allowed to compete through next academic year, wrote President Ruth Simmons in an email to the Brown community Friday afternoon. Simmons’ recommendations to the Corporation about potential cuts of varsity teams will be postponed until the fall.” Simmons also added that Brown still needs to come up with a way to improve financial aid, raise athletic coaching salaries, and reserve fewer spots in its incoming class for recruited athletes.

And so the eliminated Brown University teams have received a temporary reprieve. They’ll be allowed to compete next year. But until a final verdict is rendered, these teams need to keep up the fight. It seems to be working!

Check out the “Brown Daily Herald” article on the Brown teams.

Ivy League Athletes

Ivy League Athletics, Ivy League Sports, Athletics at Ivy League Colleges, Ivy League Admissions

In this chart from the "Daily Princetonian," it seems not all Ivy League athletic programs are created equal. Brown University and Columbia University have some catching up to do.

How do you think Brown’s athletic program compares to Princeton’s? How do the Big Green stack up against the Bulldogs? Well, if you’re judging these Ivy League athletes and programs based on how many Ivy League championships the universities earned in total this past academic year, then Princeton University is the runaway winner with fifteen Ivy League titles across both men’s and women’s varsity sports. In second place is Yale University with 7 titles followed by a three-way tie between Harvard, Cornell, and Penn with 4, Dartmouth with 2, and Brown and Columbia with 0. That’s right. Zero. From football to baseball to swimming to softball and crew, Brown and Columbia won a combined zero Ivy League championships this past year.

Check out our blog on Brown University Athletic Cuts and on Brown Athletic Recruitment difficulties to find out why Brown University might be behind the curve in Ivy League sports. What do you think Columbia and Brown can do to keep up with their Ivy League peers in athletics? Let us know your thoughts by posting below!

Ivy League Athletic Recruits

For those current Brown University fencers, wrestlers, and women’s skiers (as well as prospective applicants to the university who want to compete in those sports and other Ivy League athletic recruits / current student athletes), we’d like to remind you of a little story in the hope that it will inspire you. Maybe it will even inspire you to want to fight back the Brown University administration to try and convince the university not to cut these athletic teams. This is a story that had its beginnnings in the quaint little town of Hanover, New Hampshire at Dartmouth College when then-president James Wright, former dean James Larimore, and former athletic director Josie Harper decided to eliminate the men’s and women’s swim teams on the eve of Thanksgiving break.

Ivy League Athletes, Dartmouth College Swimming, Ivy League Recruitment, Ivy League Athletics

The Dartmouth College Swimming & Diving team was cut in 2002. But it was quickly reinstated. Can the Brown University athletic teams that were recently victims of Title IX cuts also be saved? It may well depend on whether or not Brown University students rally together to save the teams.

Their decision to cut the teams did not sit well with the swimmers or the swimmers applying to Dartmouth. That came as no surprise to the administrators. But what Dartmouth College didn’t anticipate was the entire college coming together in support of the team. They didn’t anticipate the student body marching to James Wright’s and James Larimore’s homes in the middle of the night on a cold New Hampshire night chanting, “Jim, let us swim!” They didn’t anticipate crowds of angry students protesting in Parkhurst Hall. They didn’t anticipate the prevalance of “I Am a Dartmouth Budget Cut” t-shirts. They didn’t anticipate Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times, a noted sports columnist (particularly for the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s), writing a piece that would implore Dartmouth to do the right think by reversing its decision to cut the teams.

They didn’t anticipate the national media attention that would ensue when the boyfriend of a female swimmer put the team for sale on eBay. They didn’t anticipate “Pardon The Interruption” (PTI) doing a segment on the story or ESPN running the story on the bottom ticker. They didn’t anticipate swimmers from Harvard University and Princeton University and all of the other Ivy League colleges swimming with a “D” on their arms in support of Dartmouth College Swimming & Diving. Apparently you can’t sell a Division I college team on eBay (or anywhere else) but it didn’t matter. The gimmick attracted so much attention that Dartmouth was able to endow the team and reinstate it for the foreseeable future. A $2 million endowment,named the John C. Glover Fund, poured in from Dartmouth students, parents, alumni and friends, and has since supported the swimming and diving programs. The endowment will cover operating expenses for the next 10 years (until 2012) when other funding options are to be identified.

Over nine years later, the teams remain competing. They typically finish last in the Ivy League each and every year with zero wins but this year, the Dartmouth men’s swim team actually recorded a win and the women’s team finished ahead of Cornell University in the final Ivy League standings! It goes to show you what can be accomplished with creativity and whole lot of passion. Brown University students, parents, alumni, and fellow Ivy League students and Ivy League athletic recruits, it’s your turn.

Check out our related posts on Brown University Athletic Recruitment and Brown University Recruits.

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