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If you do a search on this site, UMW has been discussed a few times, and I know at least one player's father posts on here occasionally. As I recall the gist of postings, very nice school, good academic reputation, nice facilities, located at Fredericksburg, Virginia about 45 minutes south of DC/Northern Virginia area, nice field, school is very well-liked by current students. Program has been successful, but head baseball coach has a reputation for bringing in a ton of "recruits", and has a lot of players show up for tryouts, beyond the normally expected large number of non-recruited hopefuls. Some players have felt they were seriously recruited to come there, only to find several others coming in at the same position, with the same expectations. You might try to send a PM to UMWdad with specific questions.
Marina -
Good baseball program, typically competes for league title; has been nationally ranked most years at some point in season. Nice field. They "recruit" many and weed them out in the fall from what I hear. I put recruit in quotation marks as this may be some people's problem (oh, the coach recruited me! when it may have been just a letter of interest and a "would like to see you come out for the team" kind of thing). This is all second hand info and I DO NOT KNOW FIRST HAND INFO. You will have to search that out yourself.
The school is fairly tough to get into. Last I heard (about 5yr. ago) they required 3.5 GPA and 1250 on the SAT (that's math and verbal scores of course - not including the writing portion).
A local baseball player here went other places and ended up at UMW in his junior year and loves it (this from the local paper - you know that the newspaper would NEVER print anything that wasn't the honest to God's truth!).
It's like anything else. If you went there and got cut in the fall, you would complain about the school big time. If you go there knowing you might have a chance, but have to compete with 3 others for the position and you go and end up starting there, then this is a great school and baseball program. Do a search for this school and also overrecruiting and they do come up.
The campus is nice and a great setting. Old town Fredericksburg has lots of stuff geared toward the college crowd as far as dining, music,etc.
Hope this helps.

Tim Robertson
I have an older son who was recruited by the UMW basketball team several years ago.UMW is Division 3. I have a son who is a senior baseball player now who is being recruited by Division 1 schools. Here is what I have learned during both processes which I think is one of the most important perspectives to keep in mind relative to a Div.3 school. This is a quote from a Div.1 coach-"since Div. 3 has no money to offer in the recruiting process, they lie alot!" Many ( but certainly not all!) Div.3 coaches will say what they need to to get a prospect to come to thier school. And that makes sense. They make no investment in thier recruits, so get as many as you can and see who sticks.
UMW is a beautiful school with a great academic offering. In particular, they offer a 5 years MBA program ( 4yrs undergrad + 1 grad) that is hard to beat if business is your thing. Small school, small campus, no one gets "lost". As always, it needs to be the place you want to be if tomorrow you could not play ball again. But a very good small school choice, baseball notwithstanding.
UMW is making a rapid rise in its reputation for academics and the caliber of its students. Most people do not realize that its incoming freshman classes have average SAT scores that are the third highest in VA, behind only William & Mary and UVA -- higher than Va. Tech or Madison, and all others too.

It is a relatively small school, about 4,000 students I think. It has a very comfortable, small college/college town feel. You will not see the great abundance of frills and facilities that you'll get at W&M, UVA, Tech or JMU. But for some reason it has one killer of a baseball stadium! (Named after a prominent former politician, chairman of the legislative budget committee in his day, so you can only guess how the stadium got paid for.)

The team has done quite well in D-III but I don't know anything about the coaches so I will defer to others on that subject.

It is primarily a liberal arts institution, so make sure it offers the majors you want. They are pretty strong in the fine arts and in business.

Most of the students are from No. VA. UMW doesn't yet have the name recognition nationally and because it is small that may still be a while in coming. You won't get the strong alumni network that you might at Tech. Bear in mind that this was an all-women's teacher's college until the 1970's. But it is a place on the rise and if you are heading back to NoVa after graduation I would think enough folks would recognize the value of the degree up there.
I attended UMW for 3 years and my brother attends the school now. Both of us played for Coach Sheridan. We finished in the top 25 twice and made two regional appearences while I was there. The school is excellent and i really enjoyed it there. College coaches are a similar breed and i played for two demanding ones in Austin at Methodist and Sheridan at UMW. Both have excellent records. All D3 school 'overrecruit' because you never know who is going ot show up. You might recruit 10 catchers and only get 2 or get all 10. Bottom line is no mattr how many guys get recruited if you can play you'll be fine, if you cant it doesnt matter how many guys are there in the fall.
PM me I would be more than happy to give you more info

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