Looking for high school, college guidance.

[whiporee]

If you are making a collegiate decision based on softball, please reconsider. It is not a profession.

In most cases, whatever scholarship money that comes from softball can come from somewhere else. The unfortunate truth about sports scholarships is that a lot of smaller schools used them as recruiting tools for attendance. They may offer you a playing scholarship, but that money only offsets the cost of attendance; it doesn't cover it. And if you make a college decision based on who gives you scholarhsip money, your daughter could end up in a less-than-wonderful situation for her. She might be playing ball, but she might be playing at a place she would have not otherwise considered. Sometimes that works out great, and sometimes girls end up at small schools in the middle of nowhere at less-than-great schools.

If she really really really loves to play, almost every major school has club teams. https://clubsoftball.org/league/teams/

It's not scholarhip, and it's not official, but it might allow her to go to a better school and still play.

Just something to consider.

 

[catmaster]

Are you considering switching schools based on softball? We considered it for about one minute. The competition in our district would have been way better since many of the players on the opposing teams played TB and were on track to play college. DD could have won a state title her Sr yr but the competition would have been a significant step down. The pitcher at this school was on DD's TB team and now is at UPENN.

Yes. Mainly softball but because private school has pitching to help take pressure off my DD. We are scared of injury from just pitching every game. She pitched 174 innings and threw 2811 pitches this past season. Just seems like to much for someone.

 

[radness]

Referencing the past 5 years.

Have had several students who transferred from their public high schools to private schools here in Southern California.
They experienced smaller classroom sizes. More individual teaching attention. Better academic resources. In an atmosphere with their peers of which a greater percentage were influenced by the goal of going to college.
(by a great margin their fellow classmates had the same goal to go to college compared to an extremely lesser percentage that even talk about college in public high school.)

Also have had students who went to Academy type high schools. That were not private schools but yet had to academically test to get into them. Those students definitely had different challenges. Seems to have come from the pressure of their peers and fellow classmates all driving for high academic scores seem to create a world wind of pressure. One student told me that many of her classmates go to counselors to deal with it.

In regards to softball, that situational circumstance would vary from any school to any school regardless of public, private or Academy.

 

[catmaster]

Agreed on all of this. Recently there was a post from a pitcher's parent about how she was throwing every pitch of every game and how they worked with the HS Coach to correct this issue as they were also afraid of overuse. I mean - she has the upper hand on this I would think. She can just tell the high school coach she is too sore to throw that day and if they don't want to listen I would imagine the school has a trainer? Put together a plan but save that money for college because very rarely is anyone getting a full ride to play softball - unless she is Jordy Bahl type of mat

So, just a few thoughts coming from someone who moved their dd to a private school from public school (starting her freshman year and is now in college).

When you say private school, what kind of private school? The quality among them varies greatly. Parochial schools around here are like public schools with uniforms. Then we have high academic private day schools and a high academic boarding school. Even the high academic day schools here differ with rigor. Our reason for moving dd was that our public school was very large and she was just a number. We wanted to provide her with the best chance to get into a good college. Private school definitely helped with that.

Private school in DD’s case was extremely rigorous. Even in regular classes (non-honors, non-AP) it was way more in-depth than her public school experience. Honors and AP classes took up a lot of her time homework-wise. Everyone in her classes was very smart and they also were pretty competitive with each other. When her public HS friends discussed the same AP classes they were taking, it was obvious DD’s classes took a much deeper dive than just teaching to the exam like her friends’ AP teachers did.

Softball-wise be careful what you wish for. Those kids whose parents have the deep pockets will typically start. Lots of politics at our private HS as the money talks there. Big donors expect their kids to play. If moving your dd and you want her to start, make sure she is obviously a LOT better than the kid who currently has her spot. We were fortunate that DD’s team needed a pitcher. However, DD’s sophomore year the incoming freshman pitcher’s parents were big donors. There were issues, but dd let her skills do the talking, and she kept her starting spot. Competition-wise we did not have a District or State tournament, so once regular season was over, that was pretty much it for DD’s HS team. Definitely look into how post-season is handled at the private school. Dd was bummed to not have a post-season like many of her friends did. We were not allowed to play in the State tournament that the public and parochial schools played in.

It is a big adjustment, and I’ve got to imagine even bigger when transferring in mid-HS. Mentally she has to be tough in order to deal with a lot of the unknown.

The one thing I will say is that academically and mentally, dd was very well-prepared for her freshman year at a very high-academic liberal arts college. She learned very good time-management and study skills from her HS. She also felt prepared for how in-depth her calculus and science classes were this past year. We were glad we made the move and never regretted it. However, our reason was purely academic.

Thanks. This is the exact info I was looking for. This is a parochial school. Our main reason for transfer is softball but I also look at it to help her prepare her for college. Everyone we've spoke with says there is an adjustment period. We are just scared that if her gpa gets affected enough that it will hurt her from colleges looking at her. From a softball standpoint the private school is where she needs to be.

 

[YoungBuck]

Nothing wrong with making decisions with softball in mind.

 

[_MIA_]

What does she want to do..

 

[catmaster]

Just to add to the discussion. My DD pitched in 32 games. Threw 174 innings, 2811 pitches. Does this seem like its to much?
My dd is literally the only pitcher on the team and the coach is and has not tried to develop any other pitchers. The program is going down fast with other kids transferring out.

 

[catmaster]

What does she want to do..

We have left this decision totally up to her. We have discussed the pros and cons of everything and she's still unsure. She knows softball wise the private school would be better for softball and she wouldn't have to pitch every game and she has friends on that team but she has a good friend group at her high school as well and really likes the school.
We are also considering skipping high school ball and just focus on travel, training and lessons.

 

[YoungBuck]

Just to add to the discussion. My DD pitched in 32 games. Threw 174 innings, 2811 pitches. Does this seem like its to much?
My dd is literally the only pitcher on the team and the coach is and has not tried to develop any other pitchers. The program is going down fast with other kids transferring out.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot.

 

[Rick M]

A lot of talk on this thread about ACT/SAT. DD1 is a senior non-athlete and recently finished up her application and admission process. Every school she applied to was SAT optional. She got into a really great program and when I spoke to the department head he said that they were relieved to not have to consider standardized tests. It let them give more weight to the strength of the curriculum that a student pursued as well as extra curriculars.

Also, a nearby parochial school just poached our HS’s best hitter


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk