Ask the Experts
Roundtable: Academic Interests of Potential Recruits
by James Hill, 1 January 2000
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Junior tennis players can let coaches know about their academic interests on recruiting websites like TRN. These interests often play a role in a recruit's decision to attend a particular college, but do coaches take these interests into account?
We put the following question to a number of coaches:
Q) Do academic interests on these websites weigh into your recruiting process? What advice do you give to players along these lines?
David Fish, head coach, Harvard Men
The academic interests will be important down the road, but it's not important to us in the early recruiting process. If we are looking at a wide range of players, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go into detail.
Their being a good student is the first metric, to be accepted into Harvard. We try to identify a good fit for the program, before we get into academic majors. By the time we are actually talking with the person, they are giving us direct feedback. Picking it up off a recruiting service would not be an extra feature I would pay attention to. We will pay attention to their academic interests, but not as a way to rule out people.
We will also look and see what the range of schools that person is interested in. If there are a bunch of schools that aren't known for their academic reputation, that is also a signal. They may have put Harvard on the list. But they are probably not in that range academically.
Dave Hagymas, head coach, MIT Men
At MIT, I look at academic information first, then tennis skills. Being able to see a recruit's grades and scores determines if they are a viable candidate.
The advice I would give to a recruit is to always post their SAT or ACT scores, and GPA, and what areas of study they would like to pursue.
