Athletes discuss college choices

Like any debate captain or Intel finalist who has perfected his or her specialty, school athletes also wield aces in the race for colleges. While some seniors continue to wait in anticipation for college acceptances, some are already certain of their futures.

Cross country and track distance runner senior Steven Sum, who holds the school record for a 9:10 two-miler, has already committed to Princeton University, a Division 1 school for track and field and cross country.

“Running is something that I truly enjoy and I think I can really compete at the next level,” Sum said. “It is a huge part of my life and something I really enjoy doing so it was sort of a no-brainer that I would run in college, especially after college coaches started recruiting me.”

The sports recruiting guidelines of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) allow coaches to contact players in person only during the summer before their senior year.

For some, like rower senior Alexandria Bauer, who already had her goals set on college athletics since she began her sport, it was a long wait.

Bauer, who started rowing in eighth grade and now competes with the Los Gatos Rowing club, started sending emails to colleges in the spring of her junior year. Bauer started communicating with numerous colleges, such as University of San Diego and University of California, Berkeley.

After choosing Loyola Marymount University, which is Division 1 for rowing, Bauer knew her college experience would be very different.

“It’s a huge time commitment,” Bauer said. “For me, it’s going to [be] practice in the morning and in the afternoon almost every day.”

Not all seniors like Bauer emailed colleges and some, like Sum, were somewhat less proactive.

“I usually went to [the college’s] website and then looked for recruiting questionnaires. I filled them out and submitted them,” Sum said. “Either that or they had originally found me and sent me letters already.”

Other seniors are weighing their options between Division 1 and Division 3 universities, each of which holds advantages and disadvantages for sports and academics.

Senior tennis player Neel Bedekar, who has played on the school varsity team all four years and has been playing for nine years, has already been accepted into MIT and CalTech, which are both Division 3. Both Ivy league and Division 3 universities do not offer athletic scholarships, but scholarships have not played a major role in Bedekar’s decision.

However, he is still waiting to make a choice until all his college results are released in order to weigh all his options.

“Because I’ve been playing for so long, I really wanted to play tennis in college,” Bedekar said. “[However] it’s probably going to be difficult to decide what college to choose now.”

Bedekar recognizes the advantages of going to a Division 3 university, such as more time for academics.

Bauer, Sum and senior swimmer Randy Tsai, who has not committed to any colleges, all agree on the element of time commitment and the positive effect sports has on time management.

“Because you’re swimming three hours every day, when you go home you don’t have that much time to do your homework,” Tsai said. “You have to know how to spend your time wisely.”

Tsai, who is planning on swimming in college, has not signed onto any colleges, but is looking at Division 3 colleges, like John Hopkins University, Emory University and Pomona College, and Division 1 schools like Dartmouth University and Brown University.

Like many athletes, Tsai said his sport “provides an outlet for [him] to share an interest with a lot of people.”

Sum advises those who are thinking about becoming recruited by colleges for sports to be extremely committed and expect the athletic experience to be different from the one in high school.

“You have to really love the sport if you want to play in college. It will be a lot different too,” Sum said. “You have to realize that you're not going to be the best right off the bat.”