My oh my, I’m late one week with this preview and I am sure to hear it from the one and only Adam Van Zee in the group chat. We’ve been busy here at the blog, churning out season previews and listening to you all complain about the Women’s coverage. However, we will soldier on, hoping to continue our momentum of 1,000 views per day despite the season not being anywhere close to starting and a ton of previews left to write. I’m going to shamelessly plug the following things:
- SEND US YOUR “THIS WEEK IN HIGHLIGHTS” VIDEOS, SNAPCHATS, VINES, FACEBOOK LIVES, FAKE NEWS, TWITTER PICS, YIK YAKS, OR WHATEVER ELSE THEY CALL EM THESE DAYS
- We will also be doing the Annual Fantasy Draft for the second time this year, beginning in January. Stay tuned!
- D3West is still looking for his replacement for next year, please let us know if you are interested in writing or even know someone who you think would want to write, let me know.
That’s all for public service announcements. Onto the good stuff. HOPKINS.
Overview
I’ve called Hopkins an enigma for years now, but the fact of the matter is they really aren’t much of an enigma. They are a team who is very on and off and is highly dependent on their leaders that year. Whatever effort they put in is a reflection on their captains. Last year, they had a really rough regular season to start it off, but finished strong by winning their conference and then taking out top 6 school Carnegie Mellon in the Sweet 16. I promised that I’d mention this to some Hopkins followers – but the work of this team from the beginning to the end should be noted. We think of Hopkins as a team that has a lot of talent, but we’re talking about a team that was starting some very inexperienced players in the lineup and really no “scary” spots in the lineup either. Shoutout to ex-captain Nicholas Garcia for bringing this team to great heights last year, even though the season was basically caving in on them and basically all the Blog hating on them. Hopkins is a team that you shouldn’t be f*ckin with, because they’ll surprise you when you’re looking the other way.
Coach: Chuck Willenborg, 10+ Seasons – I don’t know because Hopkins website is the worst
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Current ITA Ranking: #16, you can debate this all day
Blog Power Ranking: #13, I ranked them #8
Twitter Handle: @JHUTennis, pretty solid account but sometimes sporadic
Team Hashtag: #HEREWEGOHOP, #GoHop, I refuse to acknowledge #Roll____
Key Additions
Might have also recruited an entire country if they had the time.
Key Departures
Nicholas Garcia (#4 Singles, #2 or #3 Doubles, team captain)
Lineup Analysis
#1 Singles, Michael “MVP” Buxbaum
One of my favorite players of all time. The ultimate bro tennis player with great grades and a knack for winning big matches, just call him the MVP. Players that Michael beat last year – Abhishek Alla (x2), Luke Tercek, and that’s pretty much it. But the dude turns it on at the end of the year. I remember when he beat Warren Wood, aka the Triple Crown Winner, just because he felt like it. Buxbaum is going to be in the running for MVP this year for real, with or without the nickname. His experience and his powerful baseline game make him a potential force at #1 this year. If he puts his mind to it again this year he can lead this team to an Elite 8 once again, and maybe a Final 4. Buxbaum will be a key to this season. I’d bank on him coming through.
#2 Singles, Jeremy Dubin
Dubin has been entrenched at the #2 singles spot ever since his ascent in the lineup about two years ago. He started off struggling at the spot but really excelling when he played indoors. Now, he’s a guy that can have an on day and really beat any of the other #2s in the country. The issue with Dubin is that he really isn’t that consistent. He beat Daniel Levine twice last year, split with Swarthmore’s John Larkin, and got smoked by Eric Spangler of Salisbury. You never know what you’re going to get with the big man and that makes Hopkins that much more interesting. Dubin can potentially be lower in the lineup, but I think he stays entrenched at #2 due to his dearth of experience at the position.
#3 Singles, David Perez/Aaron Carey/Austin Gu
There are a ton of options here, so I’m going to go through the three options in the three separate slots. Just read to the finish and you’ll get a general idea of what’s going on. David Perez was one of my votes for Most Improved Player last year and for good reason. He went from relatively unknown player to a strong #4 player and the Jays will need him to step into the #3 spot potentially. Last year, his season ended on a heartbreaking note as he lost in a tiebreaker in a 4-4 match against Jerry Jiang of Bowdoin. This put the Jays within 2 points of being the national champions. Imagine that. This team was two points from the Final 4 and beating the national champion. That’s why I have Hopkins so high in my power rankings. I think they’re better this year.
#4 Singles. David Perez/Aaron Carey/Austin Gu
When you look at Hopkins ITA results, the singles portion is really freaking impressive. Aaron Carey is a big reason why. The two-star recruit is really way more than a two star recruit, as he took eventual 4th place finisher Michael Rozenvasser to a three set battle. Well, he won the first set then got smoked the next two. Either way, it was an impressive performance for a young guy who I didn’t expect to even be in the main draw. Clearly, Willenborg thinks a lot of Carey to put him in the A Draw above the 100 other recruits he came in with. If this dude can handle ITA pressure against a top player, he could translate to a pretty strong #4.
#5 Singles, David Perez/Aaron Carey/Austin Gu
Austin Gu is another freshman who impressed me at the ITA Tournament. It’s crazy how TRN recruiting rankings almost don’t even matter at this point, because Gu was definitely not the highest ranked recruit either. Well, he smoked W&L’s #1 Jordan Krasner 6-3, 6-1, until he met the red-hot Courtney Murphy of Wilkes in the next round. That’s another great result for the Jays. I’m excited to see what Gu can bring in the rest of the year. Anything less than an above-average #5 singles from this team is pretty damn disappointing.
#6 Singles, Emerson Walsh/Justin Kang/Others
Looking at the rest of the lineup, Hopkins can honestly fill any spot from #4-6 with a really solid player. Emerson Walsh was a strong #5 last year, he’s a senior, and he has a ton of experience at the bottom lineup positions. I would expect him to always be in the lineup no matter what. Justin Kang, who I’ve given a hard time all throughout his career, should see more success at #6 if he plays there. Also, I can’t go through this preview without failing to mention Nathan Safran, who is Hopkins highest ranked recruit, but didn’t appear in the A Draw (I don’t check B draws, sorry), but clearly has some potential. Hopkins will have a strong bottom of the lineup. That is for sure.
Doubles
We cannot mention Hopkins doubles without mentioning that they have a 4 TIME ITA Regional Champion team in Buxbaum/Walsh aka Peaches N’ Cream. While this hasn’t really meant much for their regular season success (see 2013-14 where they were even dismantled) this is a bonafide #1 team. Hopkins will be strong at #1 doubles. It’s the rest of the doubles lineup that will be iffy and will need to be solidified for Hopkins to make the Top 5 like I think they can. Filling your lineup with freshman doubles players is risky, so I would look for guys like Dubin, Perez, and Kang to try and fill the spots vacated by Garcia and the ghosts of Hopkins past.
Schedule Analysis
http://www.hopkinssports.com/sports/m-tennis/sched/jhop-m-tennis-sched.html
Hopkins honestly has one of the weakest schedules I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if the posted schedule is unfinished or not (I think it’s complete), but my gosh it’s pretty damn bad. They really only have one high-end match against none other than Carnegie Mellon on the schedule. I think the Jays might have been banking on Indoors (don’t know why), but they were not even invited to the tournament because of their dismal regular season last year.
Hopkins has the talent to win their conference of course, so they should cruise into the NCAA Tournament without much of a challenge. The thing is, if they don’t beat CMU, they get put as a definite #2 seed considering that they are currently ranked #13 in the country. One slipup and they don’t have the goods on the schedule to make it up. Sure, they have Swarthmore and Mary Washington on the schedule, but that doesn’t really do much for a team with Top 8 aspirations. I’m surprised at the scheduling of this team and it just so happens that Adam Van Zee has his own little article on scheduling that just came out. Maybe Hopkins should follow it.
D3AtlanticSouth’s 3 Keys to Success
- Leadership – I mentioned this in the Hopkins overview, but will mention it again. Hopkins will take the personality of whoever their leaders are. The team led by Tanner Brown/Erik Lim/Ben Hwang was a slight disappointment with the talent they had, but previous teams with David Maldow/Andrew Wang/Warren Elgort were solid, workmanlike teams. Nick Garcia continued that trend last year with a team that was potentially short on talent. This year, Mike Buxbaum and Jeremy Dubin will lead the team and the season will go where they go. If the MVP can expand his role into MVL (Most Valuable Leader) and push this freshman heavy team, they can definitely reach new heights.
- Perform Under Pressure – I think it should definitely be called out how weak Hopkins schedule is this year. They have potentially 3 freshmen playing in the lineup who will basically have ITAs and a regular season match against CMU under their belts before the potential playoffs. That’s not enough matches. I know freshmen are coming straight from the juniors, but that’s a hard ask from three young players. Unless Coach Willenborg has a few matches still up his sleeve, I’m severely doubting the amount of experience that these guys will have for a potential playoff run.
- Stay the Course – The reason why Hopkins was successful last year is because they were able to get improvement from a few players – namely David Perez and Nick Garcia. This year, they’ll have to at least maintain the talent they have, namely Carey, Gu, and potentially Safran. I don’t think anyone is worried about Buxbaum and Dubin, they’ve been doing it for two years. But Perez is a wild card in my eyes and freshmen are always a wild card. How will these players handle the grind of a full season at a prestigious school such as Hopkins? Will bench freshmen be ready to step in when injuries/performance bugs inevitably hit? A good season out of these freshmen may mean Final 4, a poor season could mean Sweet 16. Big difference.
Conclusion
To wrap it all up, I would like to say one thing. It’s always a pleasure to cover Hopkins. They’re not afraid of treating themselves like a top team even when they don’t perform. They’re a team with swag. I like that about them and I think it adds to their performance. They’re weird because they aren’t geographically isolated, but they have that wild card factor since they don’t play in a big conference. They might face a challenge in Swarthmore but I don’t think that’s nearly enough to stop them. Hopkins should be a team you mark on your calendars this year, but just mark them in May – that’s basically the only time they’ll play a big match. By the way, Hopkins, fix your damn athletics site. That thing is a monstrosity. ASouth, OUT.
I’m inclined to agree with Why on this matter. While I understand the point that the prospect of playing for a national championship is very seductive, I just can’t understand why a 3-star recruit would choose to attend Chicago, Emory, or other such institutions. Certainly, it sometimes happens that 3-star recruits start for national contenders, but the acceleration of growth seems much swifter when 3-stars attend schools for which they’ll start higher in the lineup. For example, 3-star recruits who attend Bowdoin, Brandeis, or other schools in that (tennis) ranking tier tend to improve at a greater rate than 3-stars who attend Emory or Wash U. Maybe Emory has the infrastructure in place to contend for a championship, but that same infrastructure is necessarily exclusionary–in the sense that only so many players can start at a time.
On a different but adjacent matter–the authors of this blog have a tendency to refer to certain schools as having better academics than other schools, or at least imply this. (This topic has been discussed before and I don’t mean to incite a flame war in the comments.) In this article, for example, ASouth asks “How will these players handle the grind of a full season at a prestigious school such as Hopkins?” The implication here is that Hopkins faces an unusually strong academic grind. I would love to see the authors drop this kind of rhetoric, as it reinforces institutional hierarchies that exist largely on the basis of superficial US News rankings that are predicated largely on admission rates and standardized test scores. I believe academic rankings are far less accurate than ITA rankings, for example, and would like to see us stop lending any kind of credence to them. (I would also disagree here with D3West’s point that it’s easier to get into grad school if one attends a highly-ranked college. I’ll admit that I can’t speak to med school admissions, but in most disciplines, grad school admissions place by far the greatest emphasis on writing sample and statement of purpose.)
My point isn’t that highly-ranked colleges aren’t terrific; I have degrees from schools in the NESCAC and UAA, and they’re great. But I’m weary of seeing the bloggers use language that disregards the hard academic work required to succeed at all colleges (highly-ranked or otherwise), and just seems needlessly divisive. Sorry for the long post–and these comments don’t detract from my general appreciation for this terrific site.
I appreciate your input. With regard to growth development of players (3-stars) at particularly deep schools, I’m going to list some players who have had great success: Skyler Butts (did pretty well for himself), Aman Manji (doing pretty well for himself), Benjamin Fife (all-American), Emerson Walsh (4-time all-American). These are just a few of the many 3-stars who have done well at top tier DIII tennis schools. Granted, for every one of these guys, there are probably two who never make the lineup and quit altogether, but it’s up to the player to figure out what’s best for them. I think it’s also important to consider that some of these players might not be particularly interested in continuing their tennis careers at a high level, and are using their tennis to get into well-regarded academic institutions.
With regard to the schools’ supposed academic rigor: I never intended to imply that these more prestigious schools are necessarily more rigorous than other less prestigious schools. I am 100% on board with the sentiment that US News and World Report rankings are not representative of true academic strength. I did not go to a school ranking particularly high in those rankings, I feel I received a stellar education, and I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder when people imply that other schools are better. I do, however, know from personal experience (at least in my field) that it is helpful to go to a more well-regarded school, if only for networking purposes, and to argue that going to a more prestigious school doesn’t help career prospects is very naive.
Thank you for your response. The counterargument is that (as you acknowledge) the players you’ve named–Butts, Manji, Fife–are outliers. In the case of Amherst, for example, they’ve recruited 9 3-star recruits from 2011 through 2015. Only two have started (Fife and Andrew Arnaboldi), and those two players have seen only intermittent action. I suppose you’re right that “it’s up to the player,” but the idea that 3-star recruits have a decent chance of starting seems unwarranted to me.
Your point that some recruits “might not be particularly interested in continuing their tennis careers” is no doubt true, but I have to believe that most recruits who have put in the kind of work it takes to reach 3-star level have more than a passing interest in playing college tennis.
Matt, I love that you feel passionate about the subject and that you take the time to discuss with us. Keep doing that. Anyways, I’ll go through the below points (I wish we could bold text on this damn site).
I think where we differ is that you hold a much higher weight on tennis than I do. You are in the thinking that if a player might not play, that should be considered a back-breaker for most kids. I contend that is not the case for a MAJORITY of DIII Tennis Players. It IS, however, the case for DI Tennis Players – that’s why you see so many transfers. However, when I was choosing a school, I went through the following criteria: Academics, Network, School Prestige, Location, Team Success, How much i liked the coach, how much i liked the team, and then finally my potential spot in the starting lineup. I believe that is the general criteria, more or less, for most DIII tennis players – which is why you see the phenomenon that you see today. Again, this is all based on personal preference.
Re: Your point on our rhetoric and hyping more schools than others. While I can refrain from making too many of these references, I will say this – I think you are dreaming of a Utopian college landscape if you believe one school is not more prestigious than another. As D3West mentioned to me in our group chat – yes, there are only so many ways to teach a curriculum from a textbook. Also, the school is what you make of it. I wholeheartedly agree with those two statements. However, it is naive to think that one school as A WHOLE is not more “prestigious” than another. Whether it is fair or not, a higher group of “successful” prospects apply to “prestigious” schools such as the Ivies, and other DIII schools that I will refrain to name. This creates a demand for the school – they get to choose the “best of the best.” In turn, they will graduate an average student that will probably be more successful than the average student that graduates from another school. This then moves onto the workplace, where your “top performers” have a higher tendency to be from “prestigious” schools, and the effect trickles down. These successes then build the school’s NETWORK, which as we all know is the most important thing in becoming a successful player in the workplace. Basically, if your competition is higher, the amount of work you need to do to keep up with your peers is going to be a bit higher.
It boils down to competition. No matter how we got here, schools such as top DIII schools are considered “better” as a whole because their general student body is more successful. This will always be the case unless a large group (edit: a VERY VERY LARGE group) of students bucks the trend. This is how schools rise in ranks, because they become more popular. It’s a popularity contest, whether we like it or not. Popularity drives competition because schools can be more selective. It’s natural.
Going back to selecting a school. I would equate the decision to be similar to that of a young businessman or businesswoman. Let’s say you have two choices – first is to join a big corporate company, rely on the company name, make your above average paycheck, and live comfortably. Second is to join a start-up, potentially make a name for yourself, work really hard to do so, and make more money than Mr. Safe at blah blah corporate company. 80% or more are choosing option 1. That’s what choosing a school is like. Take the name and the almost guarantee (assuming u dont royally eff it up) and basically give yourself a open doorway into the workplace.
Lastly – when I picked a school, I knew I’d play tennis for a max of 4 more years. My life is *hopefully* 70 more years. Which is more important? By the way, I think when we finally come out with our “Recruiting Hub,” this will be an objective way to compare schools and see what the prospect really is going through when choosing a school. Could bring more clarity to the situation.
Hi ASouth,
Thanks for your very thoughtful comments. You and D3West know far more than I do about the criteria recruits use in selecting a school, so I’ll defer to you both (even as I find the order of criteria rather suprrising.)
To clarify: I never said that certain schools aren’t more prestigious than others. Of course they are. My argument was that we should stop acting like prestigious schools are actually more difficult than lower-ranked ones. This is, to my mind, a complete fallacy–and a fallacy that I believe you promote when you say things like “How will these players handle the grind of a full season at a prestigious school such as Hopkins?” When you say something like that, you’re naturalizing a cultural system that thrives on inequality.
To D3West’s point that “there are only so many ways to teach a curriculum from a textbook”–I actually disagree with this line of thinking. Every school teaches differently, and part of the reason why I dislike rankings is that they reduce each school to a number–in the process distracting from what each school can offer, inside and outside the classroom. .
Ultimately, I would just like to see fewer remarks about academic prestige, for the reasons enumerated in my posts from this thread.
My only comment is to say that there’s a reason that U of Chicago is known as “The Place Where Fun Goes to Die.” Prestige isn’t necessarily indicative of how hard a students’ work load is, but some schools simply work their students harder. For example, I know that the pre-med majors at Johns Hopkins worked a lot harder than the pre-med folks at my school. I love my school and believe that I got a top notch education, but it’s naive to believe otherwise. There’s not necessarily a direct correlation between work load and prestige, and I know many schools which don’t frequent the upper echelons of the US News and World Report rankings that work their students incredibly hard (and vice versa).
Aside from that, even within a given school, some majors are much more time consuming than others. To take DIII tennis out of it, an engineering major at Valparaiso is going to have to work a lot harder to get their degree than a communications major at New Mexico State, and I think it would be a disservice to those players who choose especially difficult majors at schools known for working those students very hard by the same standard we judge other players in lighter majors with regard to tennis development.
Aside from that, though it might seem strange to you, I know several (very good) players who were so burnt out on tennis by the time they graduated high school, that they were ready to use their athletic accomplishments to get into a school they couldn’t get into academically, and then essentially hang up the racquets. All players have different motivations. My criteria in selecting a school: 1. ranked DIII school I could conceivably start at in my first two years (#15-30 for me since I caught the tennis bug my senior year in high school) 2. good enough education that I would be able to go to whatever grad school I needed to go to if I did well, 3. not in my home town. That’s it. I casted a wide net and ended up in a good situation. We’re all different.
Well, I’ll have to respectfully disagree with most everything you say, especially your comments about certain majors carrying heavier workloads. Obviously, pre-med students at Johns Hopkins might work harder than pre-med majors at another school. The inverse could just as easily be the case. I would also just note that I went to U Chicago and simply don’t believe we had a heavier workload than other schools. The quarter system is very difficult in the sense that the academic terms move very quickly, but I don’t think the workload is necessarily tougher than at other schools.
You’re certainly free to maintain your convictions. As you say, “We’re all different,” and my sense is that we’re not going to convince each other on this issue.
We’re beating a dead horse at this point but it boils down to competition – prestige drives the attendees and the attendees drive the amount you have to work to be better than your direct competition. It has been noted to my by a couple of alumni what the grading curves are like at schools such as Hopkins, MIT, etc. But anyways, we’re just going to have to disagree. But one thing is for certain, I probably will not drop academic rigor from my rhetoric anytime soon, probably to your chagrin.
Anyways, we’ll see ya in the next comment thread 🙂
If you look at TennisRecruiting, as of next year, there will be 26 (count’em) on the roster. 14 of which are 3 stars. Mathematically (and I know these guys are smart because they got into Hopkins) a ton of them will never even sniff the starting line-up. They should be able to understand that. With so many good schools to go to, why do all these kids go to Hopkins? Same goes for Chicago, which has slightly fewer recruits but more stars than exist in the galaxy. Makes no sense to me – you spend so many years playing junior tennis and then you clearly want to play in college — why go to a school where there is a very good chance you do not play? Emory and Case have the same issue as well, and Amherst was that way a few years ago. There are so many good schools out there, I just don’t get it. Can someone please rationalize this?
I can probably answer this question as a player who attended a similar situation. Yes, the majority of us played junior tennis in order to play college tennis. When I looked at DIII schools, I saw a ton of great schools as you mention. But the thing is, every school you choose is going to have a ton of players – look at how many schools you named already (5 of em!). What brought me to my school was the allure of competing for National Championships/NCAAs. There are only a handful of schools that can do this, maybe the top 12 schools. That severely narrows down your choices. Add that to the fact that your schooling plays a huge part in the equation, and you get a lot of players wanting the same school.
Take this example:
Player wants to be a pre-med student and play tennis as a 3 star player. He has to balance his future and his current tennis goals. It makes sense for him to choose Johns Hopkins, the premiere pre-med school in the country, and try and fight his way into the lineup through his own merit. He can choose between two scenarios: Either lock himself into an amazing school and try and play his way in, or accept a starting lineup spot and go to a lesser school in his field. I’m choosing option A every time. At least that option allows you to potentially get better and crack the starting lineup of a really good team. Go for the best of BOTH worlds.
Does that answer your question?!
No because your premise is wrong. There are lots of other great schools to go to, you can be pre-med, get into med school (and BTW you can go to ANY school and be pre-med and get into med school) and PLAY. (FYI, if you watch MNF last night you would have found out that Zach Zenner went to South Dakota St and got into med-school) I am not going to name school names because I think it is really SH*** to say this school is better than that. When you get out in the real world, most people (except stuck up snobs) could care less about where you went. They want to know what you can do. But suffice it to say that there are tons of choices out there, so why not go to a school to where you can PLAY and START. Isn’t it more fun to be out there on the court competing? No skin off my nose, but a lot of you (Hopkins, Chicago, Emory, etc) kids are never going to play, and that is a shame. You are putting yourself in a bad position (at least from my vantage point). But everyone gets to make their own decision.
I’m going to break this into parts:
1) Cool your jets, dude. Starting something with “your premise is wrong” is just totally uncalled for and just unnecessarily combative. Relax.
2) Yes, people in the real world for the most part could care less about where people went. I’d agree. But what I think you fail to realize is that every single kid and parent and family has it’s own preferences. Kids can choose Johns Hopkins for whatever reason – they can choose it because they like it’s pre-med reputation (not saying you can’t get in from South Dakota State, good job Zach Zenner). They can choose it because their siblings went there. They can choose it because they really loved the coach. They can choose it for a variety of different reasons.
3) You completely ignored the point of competing for a national championship. I am unsure of what school you went to, but let me ask you this – did your school compete for a national championship? There are few experiences that compare to making an Elite 8 and competing for those schools. Take a look at those schools and show me a school that doesn’t have a plethora of recruits coming in every year.
4) You act like kids can’t have goals. Like they can’t go to a school and say “my goal here is to start on this team.” Isn’t is more beneficial for someone’s development, both athletically and personally, that they aren’t given a guaranteed spot somewhere?
5) You ask “isn’t it more fun to be on the court and competing?” Yes, it is. But you discount the fact that these guys are competing for their spot on the team, their spot in the lineup. You discount the fact that I’d rather (and this is my personal opinion) compete for a top 10 school than a top 30 school even though I’m guaranteed a “competition spot” in the Top 30. No, I’d rather have some goals and bond with my teammates of similar skill levels and try and get that elusive championship. Even if I’m sitting on the bench, I had a great bond with my teammates. Don’t discredit that.
LASTLY – I would advise you not to look at everything from a “he’s right, he’s wrong” perspective. Everyone has their reasons. There are many different ones. Be open to what people’s preferences are. If there was ONE way to do something, we’d be a really fcking boring world and boring country. They all have their own preferences. What makes your way better?
I’m just going to start this off by saying that I really understand where you’re coming from. I definitely tried to go to the most competitive school that I could conceivably go to and start either my first or second year (and I was not a strong junior, myself).
However, after spending a lot of time around the DIII landscape, I know that a lot of players have their priorities in different places. I know a player who went to Emory over a better tennis situation because they wanted to go to dental school, and some major dental something was there. Same goes for players who want to do engineering in California and apply to Harvey Mudd despite probably not getting a chance to play for CMS. Regarding your point that it doesn’t really matter where you go to school: that is just untrue. Certainly, you can get to wherever you want to be from wherever you go, but it’s just easier to get into med school from Johns Hopkins or Harvard or wherever else than it is from South Dakota State. Then, where you’re applying for residency spots, it’s really helpful to be coming from Harvard Med or Northwestern or wherever. That’s just how the world works. Whether or not that’s how it should work is a different conversation.
Point being: it matters where you go to school, and a lot of players elective to play DIII tennis are prioritizing academics over athletics, which is probably how it should be.