It's been a really good few months for our family, especially as it regards the kids' sporting events. The latest highlight came earlier this week, when our middle son accepted an offer to play college lacrosse at a nearby Division II school. The quest to play a sport in college did not go the way we expected it to, but, for him -- and our family -- it ultimately worked out great.
Our son was always a really good athlete. Twenty months younger than his older brother, our second son learned much from playing with his brother and his brother's friends when they were little. He always seemed prepared for every next step -- whether it was Preschool, or Kindergarten; Tee ball, or PeeWee football; middle school, high school, etc. -- because he had watched, from up close, his brother going through every event. And he knew, going in, what to expect when it was his turn.
Anyway, his mother and I knew, from the first summer we saw him play club lacrosse, that he would be good enough to play in college if everything played out normally. As a 12 year-old going to tournaments, we knew the kids he was playing with and against were going to be the ones who would be playing college in a few years. So when we saw him keeping up with them, and even excelling, we knew that as long as he grew normally, didn't suffer any catastrophic injuries, and didn't somehow lose his love for the game, he could play beyond high school.
He was always a key player on his club teams, and he performed well at whatever Prospect Days and showcases we took him to. But he was never big for his age, or super fast. And as such, he was never the kind of kid who jumped out at you the instant you watched a game. He was always more of a smart player who did a bunch of little things that helped the team, but might go unnoticed by the casual observer. He kind of needed to be seen over time to be appreciated.
We did all the things we were supposed to -- identifying schools we thought he might be interested in, and emailing those coaches early in his high school career, to get him on their radar. He went to those schools' Prospect Days. But the one coach who genuinely seemed interested in learning about him early ended up leaving the school suddenly -- for reasons we never found out. The new coach at that school was polite, but never seemed truly interested. And neither, it turned out, were the coaches at other schools we targeted.
What we came to realize, almost too late, was that the whole thing is a lot harder if your child has a specialty major, one that isn't offered at every school. He would have had lots of options if he intended to major in Liberal Arts or Business, probably. Engineering, though, turned out to be trickier. It seemed the schools that liked him as a player didn't offer his major; and the schools that did offer his major had their pick of a lot of kids, just like him. For them, it was a supply-and-demand thing.
A couple months ago, I ran into the dad of one of his classmates who had discovered the same problem we had. His son was a baseball player who, like my son, wanted to study engineering. But despite being a good player on high-level club teams that went to top-end showcase tournaments, and despite performing well to all these big-time individual showcase events, finding a place where he could get the education he wanted, and play baseball, was proving difficult.
A few weeks ago I ran into the dad's son. He said he had zeroed in on an excellent school a few hours away, but when he realized there were going to be eight players at his position (he's a catcher) he gave up the chase. His plan now is to go to a big school, and maybe play club baseball there.
My son was luckier. In chatting with the father of one of his club teammates at the last tournament this summer, I learned that father had gone to a well-respected engineering school nearby that hadn't been on my son's original list. Part of the reason we didn't consider it was that it was a Division II school, and we had been focusing more on the Division III level. Anyway, my son sent them a highlight video from the summer and they liked it and responded immediately. We struck up a dialogue and, long story short, they turned out to be very interested and ultimately offered him a spot on their team.
So all's well that ends well. It for sure ended well for him. But it certainly wasn't easy.
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