College players and campus inclusion

My son is a freshman at a local D-1.   At this school, all students are required to live on campus until they are 21.  There are exceptions to this policy.  All Freshman baseball players room together in the same dorm.  They are 2 to a room and were able to choose their room mate.  The way this dorm is set up, there are 4, 2 man rooms that share a common entrance from the outside.  It is not necessarily a suite but close.  This year the baseball players have 2 suites.  From what my son says, the other athletes that live in this dorm all have similar arrangements.

At my sons school he'll be attending in the fall of 2017 there is an apartment complex that houses student athletes. From my understanding that's where everyone lives.  It's literally a stone throw from all the baseball facilities and tutoring. There is a choice of 2, 3 or 4 bedroom, with one person per room. 

Son is sophomore but his school required freshman to live on campus. Athletes get to live in apartments while students live in dorms. Apartments are larger and you're around athletes across all sports but you never know what habits your roommates have, good and bad. Now he is off campus in a large apartment with one roommate and life is much better and cleaner. 

Freshmen Year - Son was placed with another freshmen engineering baseball player in a freshmen only dorm.  They'd met online over the summer and decided they were a good fit as roommates.  His roomate's father was a former MLB player which was kind of cool.

Sophomore Year - Son moved off campus to the "Baseball House" with about 8 other players mostly from his class.  During winter break, the Landlord had suggested they find new housing accommodations for next year.  There was another Baseball house with upper classmen that they would move into.

Junior Year - Son moved to a different off-campus "Baseball House" with about 8 other upper classmen players.

Senior Year - Son moved and shared a small off-campus apartment with (only) a former teammate.  It had become difficult for him to study or get his work done in the "Baseball House" so he moved to a quieter place.

Son's school requires baseball guys to live on campus for 2 years.  First year there were 8 freshmen....2 to a room with 4 rooms right next to each other in the dorm closest to the baseball field.  He knew one of the other incoming guys so they roomed together.  Sophomore year they can live anywhere on campus with whoever they choose

fenwaysouth posted:

Sophomore Year - Son moved off campus to the "Baseball House" with about 8 other players mostly from his class.  During winter break, the Landlord had suggested they find new housing accommodations for next year.

Impressive. Seriously. Surviving Ivy League engineering workload, plus baseball workload, and still enough left in the tank to p*ss off the landlord.  

Things sound pretty much the same since son attended. Freshman had to live on campus.  There was no choice in where he lived as an athlete,  he got a post card over the summer of names and numbers.  After that he and 3 others moved into a four bedroom furnished apartment and remained there for 2 years until he and one other was drafted.  These guys are brothers for life and I remain friends to this day with one of the moms from the team.  

One thing that I found is that student athletes spend very little time at home, what was more important was finding a big bed comfortable enough for a 6'4" 200 pound pitcher. Everything else came second.

My older son spent freshman year in an awful dorm room with a teammate.  Roommate was great, dorm conditions were terrible (dorm got closed when they moved out and is getting a major year long renovation).  They moved into an off campus "baseball house" with other teammates for sophomore year.  There are 9 of them in the house.  It's been a baseball house for years and years - seniors move out, sophomores move in.  It's probably closer to where most of his classes are then the dorm he lived in freshman year, but further from the field.  He's already signed a lease to be back in there next year, though he'll have a more desirable room.  He pledged a fraternity this semester, so I'm wondering if that's where he'll be senior year.  If he does, he'll be back on campus.  Playing ball, pledging - even in the off season, and pulling Ivy academics is a full plate for him.

Second son is playing at a D3 and rooming with a teammate.  Mine is an RHP, roommate is a catcher.  Dorm is good and situation with the roommate is terrific. 

When I was in college (ran track) there was no on campus requirement as the college was about 50% commuter, 50% out of the area.  Frosh athletes who lived on campus were assigned to a dorm suite of 4 rooms (2 occupants per room) surrounding a common living area and bathroom.  They attempted to put like athletes together.  In my case there was one suite on our level that contained all the long distance runners.  Our suite was 3/4 track athletes, mostly sprinters or jumpers, in the other room were baseball players.  There were some suites that were a little more split up, I know one of the women's suites, my freshman year, was a combo of volleyball, tennis, and track athletes.  In almost all cases they tried to keep the athletes together.  

After your frosh year, you could choose to stay "blind" in the dorms and be put back into a similar situation or you could choose your roommates and suite-mates.  In most cases soph athletes, who remained in the dorms, all consolidated down so that the suite consisted of mostly athletes who were playing the same sport.

Most athletes moved to apartments after their soph year.  The athletes were given preference in on campus apartments.  In general 4 folks sharing 2 rooms.  Finally there were some off campus house rental that were known as specific houses for specific sports.  For instance their was a football house, a track house, a baseball house, etc.  These houses were generally passed down each year from the current occupants to new occupants who played the same sport.  It was an unofficial thing, but it seemed to work out that way.  The last time I was back at the school, the "house" tradition was still going on.  This was 20 years after I graduated.

As long as we're telling the "when I was in . . . " stories.    At my school all students were required to live on campus all four years.  Freshman year you could leave campus ON SATURDAY  from noon to 6, come back, stand for uniform inspection at 630, then you could go back out till eleven.   On Sunday we could leave from Noon to 6 again.   That was it.   The reigns slowly loosened so by the time we were seniors we could leave on Friday and come home by 9pm on Sunday.  LOL.     my parents loved it !

GO Navy!

Goosegg posted:

As an adjunct to another topic, I thought that teasing out differences in how colleges include/separate athletes from the regular students would be instructive.

There is no right or wrong and I have seen many variants of athletic room and boards. I have seen freshman pitchers housed three to a room in off campus housing (most left school quickly) at a local D1 power; I have seen freshman placed in lottery draws just like other freshman.

At His school, after the first year random draw, students can choose roommates. Baseball players were probably like most other students on choosing roommates with similar tastes. My son never lived with another varsity athlete but some of his teammates did.  All four years he was on campus (as are well over 95% of all students all four years) but the team one year had a player who rented off campus and this became the clubhouse and scenes of much carousing.  There is always the push/pull of athletics v. non-athletics and I believe most of the kids were surprised at how much they were required to do academically to stay afloat.  They ended in jobs representative of their non-playing peers (but there were some really smart kids there - one kid developed an APP during the game which succesfully predicted which pitch would be thrown next) and most - if not all - came to peace with his playing career ending.

My experience is fairly limited, but most of the schools with which I am familiar do a poor job of incorporating student athletes into the general student population.  Athlete only dorms were technically banned years ago.  But, son's school still massed all of the freshmen baseball players into the same area of a single dorm/apartment complex.  There are certainly advantages to this from a sports perspective.  But, it doesn't really do anything to incorporate them into student life.  Despite what the NCAA says, this segregation makes them more athletes than students. 

Of course, after first year, all bets are off.  I tried my best to persuade him to stay on campus, but, like the rest of his teammates, he chose to move into one of the "baseball houses" mentioned earlier.  Any similarities to "Animal House" are more than coincidental.  

My son is about as anti-frat as his father.  But, as a friend of mine once said about his own son, "Baseball is his frat."  I think that's true of a lot of kids, mine included.  Don't get me wrong, there were advantages to living in the baseball house.  I remember one night he was trying to study while his roommates were partying.  Ended up throwing a baseball bat through a wall trying to shut them up.  This led to his learning the valuable skill of drywall repair.  ;-) Always a silver lining.

After 4 years of pursuing baseball and mechanical engineering, son was 1 "project" class short of graduating.  He went back in the fall to complete that class, and/or his "victory lap" as he called it.  He commented that this was the first time that he felt like he was getting the true college experience.  Don't get me wrong, there were no regrets there, because he has none.  Just an observation.   

My son lived in the dorms freshman year. He lived in a frat house soph year. He had to go to the library to study. He decided the frat was a great place to eat and socialize but not live due to studying. The following year I bought a fixer upper three bedroom condo. I told him to rent out one room and guess who the third room is for. Let's just say I slept in the storage room six or so weekends a year.

My daughters freshman year (D3 softball) she was housed in the "Active Living" dorm. Being an athlete was not a requirement but most were student athletes. She was in a 3BR suite with 5 other girls in a dorm on a co-ed floor. The school discouraged students from filling the dorm completely with teammates, because they were afraid on-field conflict or tension would be brought back into the house. She did have one softball teammate who she got along with just fine, as well as volleyball players and non-athlete roommates.

At my son's school (2016, so he's just finishing first semester freshman year), there is a "first year course" requirement, and some of those are residential, requiring you to room with or in proximity to classmates in that course.  Baseball coach also offered incoming freshman opportunity to room with other baseball players if not taking a residential course.  Son ended up in residential Physics class, but his roommate/classmate is a football player, and at least one other guy on the hall is a basketball player.  He's also in a junior-level math class with two baseball upper-classmen. Side effect of a small, high academic school with a lot of varsity athletes, I guess.

Students have to live on campus first two years, and can after that, but it's an urban campus with plenty of nearby housing options, so most don't.  There's a "baseball house"  where several of the players live just off campus where lots of the players hang out. I don't get the impression that he's not "included" in the regular campus population, but I guess I'll find out more when he gets home this weekend.

Interesting side note, he's apparently become pretty good friends with the basketball player, who played for a rival hometown HS. They'd never met before college, small world and all that.

At son's D2 in SF, housing was a mess.  On-campus housing had a lengthy waiting list.  Coach had no pull there.  All he could do is connect players looking for places.  Most or all players lived off campus in a housing market that is through the roof.  Five players rented a two-bedroom apt. where I think the biggest room was the hallway.  

He transferred to a school with the total opposite scenario.  When putting his package together, the staff actually steered him to off-campus housing because the market there is ridiculously cheap.  This saved him several thousand as compared to the school room and board program.  And that is with two players sharing a 2-bedroom house.

I'm guessing when the landlord of the house saw son's previous rent on the application form, she fell over.

Our 2106 just finishing his first semester at a D3 in PA.  There were 13 baseball recruits and all of them seem to live in different dorms (all have to live on campus).  I've been to campus several times for scrimmages and for parents weekend and he's pointed out where the other freshman players live.  It seems like they are pretty well integrated with the rest of the students though all seem to live with other freshman baseball players right now (including our son).  

The only requirement for picking roommates was that they have to be in the same freshman seminar tract - 2016 had spent considerable time connecting with another player who is from our area and they put in to room together and then were split up at the last minute (which was a good lesson, read the rules) but then he ended up with another baseball player who had the same thing happen.  

There is a baseball house that is just off campus with upperclassman in it that gets passed down to new players each year as Srs graduate.  That's where most of the parties are held and 2016 said he could never live there and actually get schoolwork done.  

MKbaseballdad posted:

 That's where most of the parties are held and 2016 said he could never live there and actually get schoolwork done.  

Mine said the same thing as a first semester freshman last year.  Guess where he lives now........

He does his homework elsewhere - library or a classroom building with individual study rooms. 

My guy just finished up his first semester at a D1. Looks like not only will he get to go back in jan. but the BB team still wants him. The way things are set up there is 2 kids in a pretty good sized room seperated from the room next door by a pretty good sized living room and bathroom for all 4 kids to use. All 4 kids are BB guys.They are the only 4 BB kids on the floor. Also on his floor are just regular college kids and athletes of other sports. Freshman and transfres are the only students in the 11 story building. Next year 5 of the freshman BB kids will be moving 2 blocks away into a town house of sorts for remainder of college.

For what it is worth, keep your ball players on campus if at all possible. Many a player got into trouble at various schools, and it was almost always the off campus kids.

As to housing, the schools my son went to always seemed to have special/prime housing available on campus (even for transferring players). At one D1 known nationally as a powerhouse in basketball, all student athletes (regardless of the sport) were able to get int housing other kids waited years to get into, if ever.

Presumably it is one of the perks for being a student athlete.

Son was at a D3. He had the option of rooming with another incoming baseball player. He was in the honor dorm and chose to let the school choose his roommate. 

Son would get up early for practice, go to class and stop back at noon for his lunch and get his books for his afternoon classes. His roommate would still be in bed. His roommate did not last long, by the first semester he was gone. Son had the room to himself. Another freshman baseball player wanted to change roommates. Son invited him to room with him and school approved. 

He pledged a Fraternity (he gets mad if you use frat, because the negative connotation.) His sophomore year. His big brother, in the fraternity, is killed in a car accident, on the way back from spring break. He tries to live by this young man's example. He volunteers for things he would never have before. He takes on officer positions in the fraternity, and actively volunteers in the community, through the fraternity. His fraternity was mostly football and baseball players, so they understood athletic schedules, and did their best to help incoming freshman athletes.

He attended a D3 and quite a few of the student population played a varsity team. All his professors were understanding, and many came out to watch him play. 

He felt he was a real part of the school community. Part of that was being part of his particular fraternity. He had a very good college experience.

BLD, 

Thats some story!

I think lots of coaches want their players to live together, not just in baseball.  When you have to be up early morning for workouts its good to get up together, or home late from the bus trip together.  This potentially avoids disturbing your roomate.