High school sports are one of the most popular activities for students to pursue, across all demographic lines and geographic regions in the US. While the most popular sports certainly differs by school and student, colleges too are often bastions of athletics, and recruited athletes can see a major leg up in college admissions (as we have discussed in some detail before).
This leads to an obvious question for budding young athletes: whether or not partaking in sports camps or other athletic activities during the summer is a good use of their time, and how this can impact their college admissions. The answer is: it depends. Since that’s fully unsatisfying, we’re going to spend this article exploring the nuance of summer sports programs, and whether they may be a good use of your time. Let’s play ball!
The Variety of Summer Sports Programs
Before we can begin looking at whether or not these programs are any good for you, we need to identify what the different kinds of summer sports programs are. We won’t go through every option, but we will give examples for different kinds of programs where applicable.
Local Sports Leagues
These are some of the most common, and take on different forms in different towns across the country. Private clubs for golf, travel teams for baseball or softball, fencing gyms; these are organized sports with coaches and competitions much like you’d find at school, though often with more intensive schedules and programs during the summer.
What these offer, the intensity of their programs, and how much or little each may benefit you will vary widely between them. Here are the steps we use to help students and parents evaluate the general utility of these programs:
- What is the time commitment required, and what do you get out of it in return?
- Are their opportunities for competition, or is this just a chance to build skills/train?
- How many students who attend this program are recruited on average, and where are they recruited by?
- What connections, if any, does this program have to the college recruitment pipeline?
College Sport Camps
Colleges which have sports teams generally have summer camps for them. This ranges from schools like (which at one point dissolved its football team and built a library over the stadium) to (which actually does care about its athletics program). Any school with sports teams, from DI to DIII will have some form of these camps, though their mechanics and what sports they are offered for varies.
These camps are a major recruiting resource for these schools, but students who are not being actively recruited can attend as well to show off for coaches and to try and get on their radar. These can be a good use of time if you are looking seriously into college recruiting.
Private Sport Camps
Finally, there are private sport camps, which generally exist as a place for athletes to hone their skills, but which sometimes can offer recruiting or competition options. These often cost the most of all three options by far, and tend to make the largest claims about successes. While these camps can be beneficial in some circumstances, most of the time, we find their claims far outstrip their promised benefits. We advise using the same questions we posed for local sports leagues to evaluate these opportunities.
Summer Sports and College Recruitment
Participating in sports over the summer can directly and indirectly increase your odds of recruitment, but it is not guaranteed to do so, nor are you guaranteed to be recruited by somewhere you want to attend college. That said, if you know there are already colleges interested in recruiting you, and you are interested in pursuing sports at the collegiate level, then we do recommend using summer opportunities to aid in your recruitment efforts.
The first thing to do is to attend college camps at schools you are interested in. Academic camps at a university generally don’t impact your odds of acceptance at all, but athletic camps can. This is because college coaches often have pull (albeit limited in some cases) with the admissions office, and if they want to recruit you, you are much more likely to get in.
If you are actively being courted or recruited by a college, they will invite you to a camp, but you can also sign up for camps at colleges which have not recruited you but which you are interested in. These camps are often quite short, UCLA’s are generally only two days long; University of Alabama’s for prospects is similarly two days, and Harvard’s all last one to two days.
Some schools have longer programs, but these camps are not intended to give you a major workout or to hone your technique. They’re a place for you to be introduced to a school and coaches, and for them to meet and evaluate you in turn, to see if you might be a good fit for their program.
Indirect Sports Recruiting Benefits
College programs can directly benefit recruiting efforts by letting you speak with and show off for college coaches, but other sports programs can benefit recruiting indirectly by letting you hone specific skills or compete in arenas watched by coaches. This is the case of local sports leagues or costlier sports camps, which fill much more of the summer.
These opportunities have much more of a tradeoff cost however, as they fill much more of your time, take more of your money, and are likely to interfere with other activities. If you are already being recruited by some schools, but are aiming for higher tier programs and know what you need to hone to take your skills to that level, then these may be a good use of time. For many students, however, there are far more beneficial ways to spend your summer hours.
Should You Take Part in Summer Sports?
Whether or not you are a recruited athlete, sports can be a component of what you spend your summer doing. For some school sports, this is required, with training camps in August or voluntary (mandatory) workouts held throughout the summer. For others, especially sports you take part in outside of school, workouts and competitions may not even see a break over the summer.
These demands can make participating in other summer programs difficult, especially those with extended durations, the multi-week research experiences or full-time internships that let you deeply explore an academic interest. You may be able to do both with some careful schedule juggling, but this is far from guaranteed. As with so many things in college admissions, you must decide where your priorities lie.
Showing a strong devotion to sports can be part of your admissions profile even if you aren’t a recruited athlete. In these cases, however, it is weighed the same as any other extracurricular, and doesn’t give any particular admissions boost. Thus, the most strategically beneficial thing depends on where you are as an athlete and a scholar:
- Students who are already getting recruiting interest from coaches will benefit from continuing to hone their skills, though can always benefit from academic summer programs as well.
- Students on the cusp of recruitment can benefit from improving their skills if they only need a small push to get them to the next level.
- Students who are unlikely to get recruited are going to receive more benefit from academic summer programs, or those related to their intended major.Ìý
This is an article, and we cannot tell you in set text what your own odds of recruitment are. That said, students who are top recruits don’t need to ask generally; the coaches find them.
We aren’t trying to say that sports summer programs are worthless, but that when deciding whether or not to attend, you must weigh the opportunity cost as well as any actual costs of these programs. Summers do offer students a wonderful amount of free time, but each day only has so many hours.
Our final suggestion is that students interested in recruiting, but who aren’t sure, should take the most advantage of the shorter sports camps offered by universities, especially those they are interested in attending. This is their best option to connect with coaches, and to see what the level of competition is, what other students are interested and drawing interest. Students who are not yet officially being recruited, sophomores especially, can benefit from this.
Final Thoughts
Sports have a long history at high schools and colleges, and are one of the most popular extracurriculars for students across the country. This same popularity breeds an intense level of competition; even with how many college athletes there are, very few high school students who dedicate themselves to sports continue their passions in college.
We hope that this article has shown how summer programs can help you in these endeavors, and how they may have a high opportunity cost as well. There is no single correct approach, and what the best choice for you is depends on your own circumstances and goals. If you are looking for advice on your particular situation, or want help navigating the admissions or recruiting landscape, then ³Ô¹Ï¹ÙÍø can help. Our mentors are skilled at every aspect of college admissions, and we’ve helped plenty of budding athletes continue to compete in college; schedule a free consultation today to learn how we can help you.
