Walking-on? Worth it?

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NomSeeker

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Any experience with walking-on to a USNA team? Positive? Negative? Time and commitment vs benefits?
 
NomSeeker said:
Any experience with walking-on to a USNA team? Positive? Negative? Time and commitment vs benefits?
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my guess is everything depends on the sport! many kids do try and walk on. the time commitment for varsity sports is a lot but if you love your sport it is worth it - my DD loves it and never complains about the time commitment even last weekend with a 9 hour bus ride each way for the game!
 
NomSeeker said:
Any experience with walking-on to a USNA team? Positive? Negative? Time and commitment vs benefits?
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Depends on the sport, what your goals are and a variety of other factors. I know it’s a SA, but USNA runs legit D1 programs that take an enormous amount of time. Some teams take more walk ons than others, some take none.It also takes away a great deal of time to study and pursue other ECAs. Depending on your team, your liberty and leave could be severely curtailed also. I never got Thanksgiving leave. Christmas 3-4 days, spring break was anywhere from none to a few days. It can also be a ton of work to not even be on a travel squad. There are pros; such as team tables, a group of friends, travel, away from the yard. There are probably more former athletes than athletes at USNA. We had 9 recruits in my class. 3 made it 4 years. That was and still is very common. Football will start with 60-75 each year and have 20-30 who stick around for 4 years. Of those 20-30 maybe half have seen the field regularly.
 
NomSeeker said:
Any experience with walking-on to a USNA team? Positive? Negative? Time and commitment vs benefits?
Click to expand...
As was already said, it depends on the sport along with your goals, etc. FWIW, I was a walk on as was my son (30 yrs or so later) and loved it. I was much closer to my teammates than many of my companymates.
 
NavyHoops said:
Depends on the sport, what your goals are and a variety of other factors. I know it’s a SA, but USNA runs legit D1 programs that take an enormous amount of time. Some teams take more walk ons than others, some take none.It also takes away a great deal of time to study and pursue other ECAs. Depending on your team, your liberty and leave could be severely curtailed also. I never got Thanksgiving leave. Christmas 3-4 days, spring break was anywhere from none to a few days. It can also be a ton of work to not even be on a travel squad. There are pros; such as team tables, a group of friends, travel, away from the yard. There are probably more former athletes than athletes at USNA. We had 9 recruits in my class. 3 made it 4 years. That was and still is very common. Football will start with 60-75 each year and have 20-30 who stick around for 4 years. Of those 20-30 maybe half have seen the field regularly.
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OldRetSWO said:
As was already said, it depends on the sport along with your goals, etc. FWIW, I was a walk on as was my son (30 yrs or so later) and loved it. I was much closer to my teammates than many of my companymates.
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If you don’t mind me asking, What sport?
 
There is a thread here from some months ago that asked the question if being on a SA sports team was a good thing or not as far as time commitment, grades, etc.

Most who had played said there was a lot of positives (help with study help from upper class social bonding) along with major time commitments.

Amd the ones who do end up quiting their sport to study were not those seeing much in the way of playing time.

Try out give it a go you have nothing to lose and much to gain and if you don’t like it no one will look down on you for quitting.
 
Does anyone know anything about walking-on for baseball? Anything from the difficulty of making the team, the try-out process, commitment, etc. Thanks!
 
dav1y said:
Does anyone know anything about walking-on for baseball? Anything from the difficulty of making the team, the try-out process, commitment, etc. Thanks!
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I can’t think of a college sport with more time commitments (think of all those games and all that travel away from campus) than baseball. Fall and spring seasons.

At a SA does playing a varsity sport make it easier or harder from an academic graduating standpoint?

I saw that one of the regulars who posts here said they quit their SA sports team to concentrate on class work. And that class work was a major reason students often quit SA sports teams. How much harder does it make it? Can playing on a team ever make it easier? Is quitting to concentrate on...
www.serviceacademyforums.com

A previous thread that asked a similar question
 
NomSeeker said:
So you’re a yacht rocker?
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Almost the entire team was made up of elite athletes from other sports. When I graduated, both the USNA Obstacle Course men's and women's record holders were teammates of mine. The same year, USNA set a then-Guinness world record for the 100 mile relay - 100 people each running one mile and at least five of my teammates were part of it.
 
JaxBJJGirl said:
How much prior knowledge and experience is needed to sail on one of the sailing teams at the academy?
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Offshore (big boat) folks do vary greatly, one of our "Real Mids of Annapolis" posters is a member of the team and can give more info.
In general though, there are some people who do not have prior experience who are able to become part of the team. The time commitment is significant though and often includes giving up much of Summer Leave. Team is active both Fall and Spring seasons with daily practices and some number of weekend commitments

Intercollegiate (Small Boat) folks tend to have significant sailboat racing experience prior to arrival at USNA. Time commitment can be very significant as there are regattas many weekends in the fall and spring and often there are multiple regattas in multiple places that the team supports. Practice every day fall and spring plus weekends. During winter sports season, many/most of the team will participate in off season conditioning in addition to required intramurals.
 
There are several teams that traditionally get people without prior experience in the sport prior to arrival at USNA.
For many years Crew and Squash marketed themselves to prospective plebe athletes with "Come and see us after you get
cut from your other team."
 
DomerDad said:
Distance runners compete in all three seasons. XC, Indoor T&F, and Outdoor T&F.
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It’s not the seasons. It’s the number of events. All my college kids played sports of one type or another and they played or trained all school year. None ran track or cc though.

Fall season —Winter workouts —Spring summer season. Some combination of all 3. Very time consuming.

The travel and the large number of games seemed to be the worst with baseball. Or the best for you true baseball fans.

That said as far as I known year around training or seasons seems to be the norm with most all D1 sports.

And right now USNA has at least one playing two D1 sports. Football and Lax.
 
Trust me, if a kid is good at running, and does all the running sports, there is pretty much never a break. And they are competing at least once, if not twice, a week. And that was just in high school. A D1 team is worse. I know the top ranked college programs have their distance kids running 80 - 100 miles a week.
 
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