How to Know if You’re Raising a Potential D1 Athlete
If you knew with 100% certainty that your child has the potential to be a D1 athlete, would you do things different? Would you change your parenting style? Would you invest more money in their training or private coaching? Or, would you stay the course and keep doing what you are doing?
What if you knew the reverse? What if your child had no chance of becoming a college athlete? Would this change your approach to youth sports?
The Good News
The good news is that you can find several websites that provide some pretty close guidelines on what D1 college coaches are looking for. For example, I found one site in particular that had good facts for the following sports: (depending on the sport – height, weight, GPA, test scores, achievements, etc.)
- Men’s Wrestling
- Women’s Wrestling
- Football
- Baseball
- Softball
- Men’s Soccer
- Women’s Soccer
- Men’s Track and Field
- Women’s Track and Field
- Men’s Basketball
- Women’s Basketball
- Men’s Tennis
- Women’s Tennis
The Bad News
The bad news is that none of the facts provided in the links above matter until high school. So if your child is less than 15 years old, you really have no idea if they’re a potential D1 athlete.
Your child could be a late bloomer, and not show their true potential until later on in high school. Or your child could be an early bloomer, who turns out to be average once the competition catches up with their biological maturity.
This fact is sometimes a hard pill to swallow for parents with high expectations. If your child is not yet in high school, you just don’t have enough information. Therefore, it would be foolish to make decisions based on their potential to be a D1 athlete. As a result, the best decision you can make in the meantime is to:
- nurture your child’s strengths,
- cultivate their self-motivation,
- set high but realistic expectations, and
- enjoy the journey.
If you do these four things everything will turn out fine.