Excessively Early Recruiting

Crafting a student body means taking into account many different skills, and athletic recruitment forms a substantial part of the college admissions process. Here at Harvard, scouts recruit for a host of varsity sports, and colleges around the country compete fiercely for strong high school athletes.

The problem: Recruiting may start far earlier than one might expect. According to a recently published article in the New York Times, many athletes get recruited as early as fifteen years old—counter to NCAA regulations—and some schools may recruit even younger athletes. Excessively early recruiting puts unnecessary pressure on students at a disturbingly young age, and needs to be stopped.

Early recruiting hurts student athletes by needlessly creating a high-pressure environment, rife with uncertainty and possible heartbreak. Recruiting often involves generous scholarships to highly valued colleges, so students recruited as early as thirteen years old can feel as if thousands of dollars—not to mention their educational opportunities—ride on their athletic performance.

This trend is especially distressing since colleges are known to withhold athletic scholarships if the athlete in question can no longer play. By NCAA rules, scholarships can be renewed or withheld on an annual basis, and schools can choose not to renew them if circumstances change. The University of Mississippi revoked its scholarship to a high school football player in Georgia after he tore his ACL. A student allegedly had to leave the University of Missouri after the school chose not to renew his basketball scholarship due to an unimpressive season performance.

The stakes are extremely high, and the process of early recruiting is thrusting those stakes on students too young to bear them. It seems bizarre to grant scholarships to thirteen-year-olds when so much can change in four or five years. Athletes could face permanent injury, or fall behind in athletic prowess, or simply decide they no longer want to play—all of these cases could be devastating for a young athlete facing the possible loss of a scholarship to a dream school, often worth thousands of dollars.

Harvard does not offer scholarships for any kind of skill, whether academic or athletic. This is good in part because it discourages the high-stakes practice of aggressive early recruiting.  Harvard of course still has its extensive financial aid program. We hope the spread of accessible higher education continues and helps to limit the pressure on students—especially those who can afford college today only with an athletic scholarship.

Recruiting can be a harmless or positive phenomenon. Good athletic teams add to school spirit, and athletic talent should be taken into account as much as any other extracurricular ability when making admissions decisions. But the process should be just as focused on student athletes’ mental and physical health as it is on building strong teams. Schools should resist the temptation to recruit at ever younger ages. For students as young as thirteen, the pressure is simply too high.