Anyone familiar with the baseball program? Curious about the experience, travel, culture, commitment. DS knows athletics/club sports are a big part of the CGA experience. Curious if those that played felt it added to 4 year experience or if didn’t get to participate in some things because of baseball. Impression, which could very well be wrong, he has is some cadets drop baseball after 3/c year due to other Cadet commitments. He is talking with Coach soon and trying to get more informed.
CGA baseball
- Thread starter Rambler
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I think there are cadets in all varsity sports who drop their sport to focus on academics. I do not have a cadet on the baseball team, but my daughter is friends with several cadets on the team who have continued to play through 2/c year and who plan to play in 1/c year. You can find their schedule from last year here: https://www.uscgasports.com/sports/bsb/2022-23/schedule. They DO miss a lot of classes during the season because they have games on both weekends and weekdays. Cadets should do their best to adjust their schedule if possible so that they have fewer afternoon classes during baseball season so they can hopefully reduce the number of classes they miss.
Small Team Bacsi
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There are lots of SA threads about those that play varsity sport at one of the SAs .
Both my grad and my hopeful some day grad are or were varsity types. For them it was the best thing about the SA. without the sport I doubt the grad would have been one.
you do miss class for games and travel , miss study time for practice, and you miss a whole lot of marching and other things “regular” students suffer thru.
They can also miss leave or vacation time for games or even practice.
I would always want my kids or GKs who were good enough to play to play. IMO the pluses far out weigh the negatives. None of mine attended the USCGA. And YMMV.
I will say in decades of following this issue , the only people I know or have heard of , that gave up sports to concentrate on studies , were students also dealing with lack of playing time issues.
Both my grad and my hopeful some day grad are or were varsity types. For them it was the best thing about the SA. without the sport I doubt the grad would have been one.
you do miss class for games and travel , miss study time for practice, and you miss a whole lot of marching and other things “regular” students suffer thru.
They can also miss leave or vacation time for games or even practice.
I would always want my kids or GKs who were good enough to play to play. IMO the pluses far out weigh the negatives. None of mine attended the USCGA. And YMMV.
I will say in decades of following this issue , the only people I know or have heard of , that gave up sports to concentrate on studies , were students also dealing with lack of playing time issues.
My DS is being recruited by CGA for baseball as well and was wondering about the same things. He plans to take a recruiting visit soon and talk to other cadets/players about the their experiences.
I agree with all of this, and my daughter competes for CGA. She loves her team and loves competing. But some sports, like baseball, seem to miss a lot more class than other sports since they have multiple games a week. So it is something to think about. I would absolutely plan to play whatever your sport is, but realize that it will take a lot of time management to make it work.
My son plays on the baseball team. He is going into his 3c year and being on the team was probably what helped him get through 4c year. He is a management major which I hear is the easiest from a course load in the future but believe all 4c take pretty much the same courses.
His teammates are what helped keep him grounded and practices/games give the 4c a break from some of the stress the other 4c feel that don't have an outlet or older classmates looking out for them.
Also the program is improving a lot. I know the academy is recruiting heavily now that coach has had a couple of years in the program and COVID restrictions have gone away.
His teammates are what helped keep him grounded and practices/games give the 4c a break from some of the stress the other 4c feel that don't have an outlet or older classmates looking out for them.
Also the program is improving a lot. I know the academy is recruiting heavily now that coach has had a couple of years in the program and COVID restrictions have gone away.
USCGABound
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There are two types of athletes at the Academy. The real ones and the casual. The real ones love their sports, love their teams, love competing, find a way to balance sports with academics. Will use all resources available to excel in both areas.
The casual athlete most likely always prioritize academics over sports, completely understandable. From what I gather, the Academy is being a bit more aggressive recruiting top level athletes. What amazes me is the top level athletes are also very smart. Kinda of you can have it both ways.
The casual athlete most likely always prioritize academics over sports, completely understandable. From what I gather, the Academy is being a bit more aggressive recruiting top level athletes. What amazes me is the top level athletes are also very smart. Kinda of you can have it both ways.
Offshore
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1/c Cadet here.
I disagree. If you are on a varsity team at CGA, you are committed (for at least that season). I would argue there are no "casual" varsity athletes at the academy. Club sports maybe. IC sports definitely.
Granted sometimes cadet athletes on varsity teams find the sport too much after a year or two and end up quitting the team after the season has ended (I have heard of quitting in season for various reasons but that for the most part is very rare). But all varsity athletes are real + committed. No fake/casual varsity athletes at CGA even though it's D3.
2 grads from the class of 2021 ended up going D1 for running track after graduation and pursuing a master's degree as their first assignment (they were ensigns being paid by the CG to go to grad school and run track...sounds like a good deal to me). Countless of CGA varsity athletes have been named All-Americans in their respective sports (including a classmate of mine).
JAH2002
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2/c Cadet here. I’m going to agree with @Offshore. Every varsity athlete is committed to their sport while also maintaining their GPA. It is not an issue of what the athlete is putting first; the coaches understand that academics are the priority. Our school is too small to have “casual” varsity athletes. What often happens is someone might not be as passionate about the team, so they decide to leave after the season ends. That’s what I did. I was a varsity athlete for three semesters, but when I was unable to maintain the level of effort the sport demanded, I transitioned to club sports.