NCAA Will 14yo lvl 6/7 make NCAA?

[pandaamiko]

Hypothetically, if this gymnast is starting high school and her teachers need to know if she will be doing NCAA to give her approved NCAA courses. Is there even a point to consider NCAA for college? Or is she too late and we shouldn’t worry about the high school ncaa approved courses. She’s a hard worker and does good but is very behind for her age I believe.

 

[josie55]

Probably not, unless she’s hyper focused on it and wants to do Acro and Tumbling, possibly d3 but even that would be a big stretch.

 

[Dahlialover]

The NCAA academic requirements are designed to ensure athletes have the minimum academic preparation necessary for college-readiness. Wouldn’t you want your daughter to have those courses anyway, if her plan is to go to college?

 

[skschlag]

The NCAA academic requirements are designed to ensure athletes have the minimum academic preparation necessary for college-readiness. Wouldn’t you want your daughter to have those courses anyway, if her plan is to go to college?

This is my question as well. The courses my son needed for NCAA eligibility were really the same courses he needed for graduation and for college admission. In fact, I think graduation requirements were more than eligibility.

 

[gymgal]

The NCAA academic requirements are designed to ensure athletes have the minimum academic preparation necessary for college-readiness. Wouldn’t you want your daughter to have those courses anyway, if her plan is to go to college?

It depends on the high school and how the school district is set up. Some courses may not be approved by the NCAA but are still rigorous in terms of College standards. We ran into this when we were researching online schools as hybrid to homeschooling. Initially we thought it was just because they were nontraditional schools but public schools run into these problems as well. New courses, changes in the curriculum, etc.

 

[mezzamare]

At our school, all of the core curriculum classes required for graduation are also NCAA-approved, so there isn't any sort of "pre-approval" needed for those classes. I don't know how anyone could predict whether or not a certain athlete will compete NCAA anyway... isn't it just best to prepare them to do so, even if they don't?

To your other, more implicit question... is she too far behind? If you look at the post I did about who is getting onto college teams, you'll see that the later girls move into upper optionals, the lower the chances of making a college team. Even for the teams on which a number of girls NEVER reached Level 10, many of the girls were multi-year Level 9s. Meaning they had the time to train those coveted L10 skills, even if they didn't have full routines across all four apparatus.

Of course, there are also girls who progress through optionals a year at a time, make it to L10 as seniors, and end up on college teams. No two journeys look exactly the same. It's up to our kids to work toward their dreams; its up to us parents to be supportive yet realistic.

I second opening up consideration to Acro & Tumbling. Roughly half of their athletes are recruited out of gymnastics, and they are generally looking for girls with L8+ skills. There are lots of meets posted online, so your daughter can get a sense of what the sport looks like.

 

[gymgal]

In general, I would have her stick to the NCAA approved list for her main courses but if she wants to take a course that's not on the list, it's fine. She will most likely have more than enough credits through the NCAA list if needed. As for whether she has a chance, I would say no in general, unless she started late and is going through the levels really fast (scoring out) while still doing well. D1/2 requires NCAA eligibility status. D3 does not. As someone else mentioned, Tumbling/acro (or cheer or dance) are options as well and I am not sure if they are D1 NCAA eligibility required but you would want to look into that. Diving too, which is a sport that former gymnasts tend to take to well. In other words, she wants to keep her options open just in case.

 

[gymjunkie]

There are rare cases where a late bloomer has a shot at NCAA, but if that were the case for your daughter, her coaches would've already had a talk with you and presented a plan to get her up to level 10 quickly. One of my daughter's teammates grew up doing cheer and decided to try gymnastics at age 11 (xcel). She was spotted almost immediately by the JO coaches and after xcel season was over, she was moved to train with L8s. She tested out of L4 and did a fall season of L5, tested out of 7 and did a spring season of L8. By 13 she was a L9, and by 14 a L 10. So, yes it's possible for some unique kids to move quickly through the levels -- but only if the coaches have a plan. There is nothing wrong with taking NCAA classes, they are college prep so they would not hurt her in any way.

 

[moogacat]

If you have any worries that she'll be scheduled in classes that will leave her short of NCAA eligibility, and you think there's a chance she'll be interested in Acro & Tumbling (my kid just committed to an A&T program, and there are programs at Divisions I, II and III), then at least go ahead and do the free NCAA recruiting registration for her. I think that will give you access to the tool you can use to see what classes for your school are NCAA-approved. My kid didn't decide she was interested in recruiting until after junior year started, so it was a relief when I got her into the system and was able to check that she'd be academically eligible based on the very normal classes she had already taken.

Also happy to answer any questions about A&T recruiting. It's been fun!

 

[mezzamare]

Also happy to answer any questions about A&T recruiting. It's been fun!

Congrats to you and your daughter!

I'd love to hear more about your experiences with this! What skills were coaches looking for, what were their expectations about familiarity with the sport, what the general process was like, etc.

 

[pandaamiko]

The NCAA academic requirements are designed to ensure athletes have the minimum academic preparation necessary for college-readiness. Wouldn’t you want your daughter to have those courses anyway, if her plan is to go to college?

Some languages aren’t approved by NCAA. She would have to give up her deserved lang.usage for something like Spanish or ASL

 

[Dahlialover]

Some languages aren’t approved by NCAA. She would have to give up her deserved lang.usage for something like Spanish or ASL

Students only need 16 NCAA approved courses, so there is plenty of time to take non NCAA courses.

 

[pandaamiko]

Students only need 16 NCAA approved courses, so there is plenty of time to take non NCAA courses.

Thanks for answering. Do you know how much time there will be to do the non approved courses? For example one school year or less?

 

[Dahlialover]

I’m not an expert. I just looked it up online. 16 courses over 4 years is 4 classes per year. So if a student does math, science, English, and history/social studies every year, they will have the necessary number of courses. Different schools have different numbers of periods but there should be several left over.

 

[moogacat]

Congrats to you and your daughter!

I'd love to hear more about your experiences with this! What skills were coaches looking for, what were their expectations about familiarity with the sport, what the general process was like, etc.

This is a great time to get into A&T recruiting because there are a lot of roster spots available. The sport is undergoing rapid expansion so a lot of new teams are looking to build out entire rosters. The coaches aren't expecting a ton of familiarity with the sport since there's no analog available at the high school or club level, but it's helpful to watch some meets on ESPN+ or YouTube. I know that helped my daughter a lot- she not only liked what she saw, she impressed potential coaches with her knowledge of the sport.

As for skills, it varies depending on your background. If you're coming from artistic gymnastics, they are looking primarily for tumbling. The "biggest" skill being thrown right now is normally a back 1.5, but I expect that to change over the next few years. My daughter also posted videos showing strength, like holding pikes on parallettes and handstands, along with standing tumbling. She got a lot of attention just on her instagram, and was able to snag several great offers before she committed this week.

One last tip-- if you have a child who is interested start getting in touch in the fall of junior year. The season starts in February, and if you email coaches in season you get lost. My daughter is just now hearing from a lot of schools who were her original top schools, and now she's committed. It's fine-- she's ended up where she needs to be, and we're beyond thrilled. But if she'd gotten in touch in the fall instead of waiting until season started she might have had more talks with those schools.

 

[NEcougcoach]

Hypothetically, if this gymnast is starting high school and her teachers need to know if she will be doing NCAA to give her approved NCAA courses. Is there even a point to consider NCAA for college? Or is she too late and we shouldn’t worry about the high school ncaa approved courses. She’s a hard worker and does good but is very behind for her age I believe.

sorry, no

 

[twinmomma]

This is a great time to get into A&T recruiting because there are a lot of roster spots available. The sport is undergoing rapid expansion so a lot of new teams are looking to build out entire rosters. The coaches aren't expecting a ton of familiarity with the sport since there's no analog available at the high school or club level, but it's helpful to watch some meets on ESPN+ or YouTube. I know that helped my daughter a lot- she not only liked what she saw, she impressed potential coaches with her knowledge of the sport.

As for skills, it varies depending on your background. If you're coming from artistic gymnastics, they are looking primarily for tumbling. The "biggest" skill being thrown right now is normally a back 1.5, but I expect that to change over the next few years. My daughter also posted videos showing strength, like holding pikes on parallettes and handstands, along with standing tumbling. She got a lot of attention just on her instagram, and was able to snag several great offers before she committed this week.

One last tip-- if you have a child who is interested start getting in touch in the fall of junior year. The season starts in February, and if you email coaches in season you get lost. My daughter is just now hearing from a lot of schools who were her original top schools, and now she's committed. It's fine-- she's ended up where she needs to be, and we're beyond thrilled. But if she'd gotten in touch in the fall instead of waiting until season started she might have had more talks with those schools.

Also, for A&T recruiting, instagram is where it's at. My 2024 daughter has three offers and had many conversations, ALL of which got started on instagram.