Texas Lutheran

Solid school and baseball program. They are not a national powerhouse, but field competitive teams year in and year out. They seem to have very good hitting teams and lack a little in the pitching depth. The just moved into the SCAC from the ASC, which means they will have to beat perennial national powerhouse Trinity to get through to a regional.  

The school is on the smaller side, around 1,400 students and it is a religious school, but not sure how much so, it has a solid regional reputation. It is about 1/2 hour from San Antonio so it probably does not have as many spots to go out to compared to a school closer to a bigger city. Seguin seems like a pretty small town. It would be easy to get to/from there given the location to SA and the weather is generally conductive to baseball. I am actually going to go see a series there next weekend so I can PM you with my opinion of the facilities and school layout, town, etc, if you want. Let me know. 

A PM would be great!

Congrats to your son. Even without ball, any acceptance letter is very good news.

My son played some travel ball games at the field in 2008. It is located in Seguin, TX which as BOF stated is not far from San Antonio. Seguin is a picturesque small town. I know the school had a JV team as well as a varsity in past years. They are usually a good competitive team but as BOF also said, not on a national scale. There was an older scout for the Texas Rangers named Buzzy Keller who lived right there and helped with the team and he is actually the one who gave my son an invite to the Area Code tryouts after my son played a game at the campus.

Don't know if this is meaningful but certainly something to ask about at some point... every player on a lengthy roster is from Texas.  I know your son is not.

cabbagedad, other than Trinity University, you will find that same local pattern at nearly every D3 in Texas, and there are many. They recruit locally/regionally and are pretty much recognized on  a regional basis, from an academic perspective. The relatively newer coaching staff at Southwestern will probably start reaching into the West Coast and California, based on the pattern when the head coach was at Hendrix College in Ark. For the most part, history tells us that players at the Texas D3's are from Texas(other than Trinity).

Your observation is a very good one, though, because there can be some adjustments for a kid from CA. 

Well at least they don't get snow-outs in Central Texas though. The kid is still waiting to hear from his California D3 schools (and also from Trinity and from various Cal States). But right now it's Ohio or Texas.    There are relatively few D3 opportunities in California -- (there are 11 D3 programs in the entire state as opposed to 17 in Texas)   There aren't really even all that many D1 and D2 slots, at least compared to the number of players that would like to have one of them.  

All in all,  I suspect that because of the fierce competition for slots in CA,  there are lots of kids from California playing baseball somewhere else in the country.   My guy is determined to play somewhere at some level next year.  That's why he applied to schools in 7 different states.   

Congratulations on your son's acceptances!  Now the hard part of picking a school begins!

We've visited a lot of the same schools you've referenced here and previously.  2012 ended up going to the East coast.  2016 is looking nationwide too.

One of the things that helped my sons make their master lists and then narrow them, was the freshman retention rates and four year graduation rates at the schools.  Going from Cali to anywhere else could be an adjustment, so these two numbers may or may not matter in each specific case.  But we put some weight on both of them and looked for schools that had strong percentages retained and then graduated.

"Well at least they don't get snow-outs in Central Texas though."

Dad, from experience, it does not happen often, but it does happen! It is not fun to drive the freeways of San Antonio with ice, snow and black ice!

Actually, there are only 9 D3's in CA. now. Leaving out Cal Tech, Pomona-Pitzer and CMS where the selectivity is as rigorous as most colleges anywhere, and we have  6 where baseball could make a meaningful difference on admissions.

Not trying to make your job any tougher, but has your son looked at Menlo College. They have a pretty nice little NAIA program developing.  They also just dropped football with publicity that at least some of that revenue is going to upgrade the remaining sports.  It is a very small school(600 or so students) with a primary focus on business majors.  Baseball wise, they play a challenging schedule and seem to be getting better each year.

Menlo is not a good academic fit. Kid is an artist  (not just on the field but off it).  He's applied only to place where he can pursue both multi-media arts and baseball. 

I agree that strong retention rates are important, but at most schools the retention rate is higher for Athletes than the general population. I am not sure if Athlete retention rates are published. 

Have had good exchanges with the coaches here and nice academic package.  But can't see him deciding to go here rather than Cal Lutheran.   

Cal Lutheran is a top program.  Congratulations if your guy can play there!  That's awesome.

You guys are undoubtedly weighing the pros and cons of all these schools.  It's a tough task.

This is all about finding the right fit for your student-athlete as you know.  So many factors to weigh. 

I hear what BLD says regarding athlete rates may be higher, but the freshman retention rates are 84% vs. 69.8% and the four year grad rate is 61% vs. 31%.  Those #'s heavily favor Cal Lutheran in my opinion vs. TX Lutheran, particularly for a California kid who likes it out here. 

I have a 2012 Cali kid who plays back East.  We are so thankful the retention rate and grad rate is so high at his school...he was the athlete who is fighting against both.  Every kid is different.  My 2016 desperately wants to play in Texas.  TX Lutheran is probably a better fit for him.

Good luck!!!

IFDad,

From what  I have read here on HSBWeb, a kid who is in the ballpark academically might get a bump if Coach Pericolosi really wants him.

Of course that's a tough ballpark to be in -- 92% in top 10% of class, mean ACT 33, etc.

No question the D3 opportunities here in CA are very limited, especially those that are high academic. In general it also seems that  warm-weather, high academic opportunities are fairly limited.

Slugger, if Cal Lu is high on the  list and you need some feedback, PM me... have had a few kids that played for me go there as well as others from our immediate area.

"In general it also seems that  warm-weather, high academic opportunities are fairly limited"

JCG, this could be an interesting discussion topic on its own.  Before our son went to Trinity U in San Antonio, we viewed the high academic D3's with baseball opportunities as primarily those in the NESCAC, a reputation generally well deserved.  At our son's HS, the college counseling office referred to everything between the West Coast and East as "flyover schools" where many tremendous opportunities existed.  Where I think some of the distinctions might exist are where the definition of warm weather begins and ends and those with a regional vs national perspective for strong academics.  There is little doubt that the 3 in the SCIAC meet both criteria for academics but only one for baseball.

Emory certainly meets both and so does Trinity.  Where this can get a bit fringy depending on perspectives is when we look at strong regional schools in the South(Millsaps, Centre, Sewannee, Oglethorpe, Southwestern, etc)  or those not clearly defined as  warm weather, such as Washington U, Rhodes,  etc. 

Most of these have strong academics, probably more of a regional strength(leaving out Wash U) and high quality baseball/baseball opportunities. Each is also quite well coached by guys who would be successful at any collegiate level but love the D3 aspects.

Having been through and finished the process, my perspective is there are more warm weather strong academic D3 baseball options than we might realize.

IFDad,

Thanks for your thoughts.  Yes it is an interesting topic. And complicated.  It's still early for us as 2017 has yet to take any standardized tests.  If he does as well as his 2015 brother,  (34 combined ACT) I'd think that almost any D3 is within his reach if the coaches like him and have any juice with admissions.

He's only beginning to think about schools and warm weather is definitely a concern, which disappoints his mom, who would love to see him at Amherst, Williams, etc.  Emory and Trinity are certainly on our radar.  Maybe Hopkins and Washington and Lee  -- again depending on test scores, continued academic success, and whether he can be convinced that MD and VA are warm enough. In CA, as well as Pomona, we've checked out Occidental (though I think he'd like a larger school) and Cal Lutheran -- but the issue there is that they don't seem to meet nearly as much demonstrated need as the others.  We may also look  north, as I think Willamette could be a good match and he's got a friend who likes it there.  I'll take a look at the other schools you mention.

OTOH he seems to be undecided so far about studying physics and/or chemistry, or going to engineering school -- if chooses the latter my guess is that he winds up at a UC, and as you know that's a whole different discussion.

I got to see TLU today and Infieldad did a good job of summarizing them and  Texas D3 teams other than Trinity and maybe a couple of others.

Specifically in TLU's case it is a small school in a small Texas town with mostly regional kids there. There were a lot of locals at the game and I don't think there was more than a player or two on the roster outside of the regional area. The town was a typical small town with about a 1 mile square downtown area. You see towns like this all over Texas and the Midwest. The school was nothing special and I don't see the attraction for a kid from outside of the area going there. They are a solid team, but what separates them from Nationally ranked teams is their depth. They are solid 1-6 but once you get beyond this and maybe their top one or two pitchers they can't compete with the Nationally ranked teams. Baseball wise they will compete very well in their conference and will from time to time make a regional. Academically they are a good regional choice for a local kid, but I would have a hard time seeing a kid from outside of the area wanting to go there. 

On the flip side I agree with Infieldad, in I can see South Western growing into a Nationally competitive team, it is an excellent school, it is situated in a great location to recruit from the Dallas, Austin triangle area with lots of local talent and has the academic basis to recruit Nationally.

Thanks for the info.  We've pretty much ruled it out. I did see that TLU took one from Trinity today -- but got spanked hard in the second game.  

Anyway, he's seems pretty decided on Cal Lutheran  (though Ohio Wesleyan keeps tugging at the kid because of the people he met at reception for No Cal students admitted to the place and he's trying to decide whether to go for a visit over his spring break  He's  also actually  still waiting to hear from Trinity.  But since getting into Cal Lutheran and having the coaches really come at him,  everybody else has pretty much dropped off his radar).   If I had to predict, I said it will be Cal Lu -- but  you never know.  17 year olds are not entirely transparent. 

Congrats on the admits. Sounds like he has some great schools  -- and baseball programs -- to choose from.