The Spice is Right: RegionalAS
It’s getting cold outside, boys and girls, so how about a little spice to heat up your life? We’ve gathered the blogger roundtable for one final time in 2018 to do a little crystal ball gazing and fiery hot take…ing for you. Each blogger has given a hot take about the upcoming spring season, and all of the other bloggers are here to sample the spice, and give their reviews. Was the take too spicy? Not spicy enough? Just right? We’ll be heading into winter mode pretty shortly, but we’ll try to start hitting up season previews beginning next month, and running a couple per week until teams are back from Winter Break. Check out RegNEC’s hot take on winning an NCAA title and NewCentral’s spice on Kalmazoo so far. Today we have RegionalAS’ take, and most of us are just a little bit skeptical…
RegAS (aka Miami Spice) take:
After being traditionally dominated by 4 and 5 star American recruits, we are about to see more highly touted international recruits entering the DIII landscape, especially after Sorkin’s fall results.
AS: I’m confused, because this is a take with no basis whatsoever. Is RegAS saying that internationals will use Sorkin as an inspiration and start to become DIII studs? I doubt the Russian Confederation is taking note of this and altering their college placement strategy to get more spies kids into colleges like Tufts. This is amazing! Is Boris Sorkin the LeBron James of Russia now? Will he try and transfer this year and announce his decision on ESPN in benefit of the Russian Boys & Girls Club of Vladimir Putin? Will players from near and far talk about how Boris Sorkin of St. Petersburg, Russia, took the DIII world by storm and won the ITA Fall College Nationals in ROME, GEORGIA. Okay yea so you know what I think now.
RegNEC: There’s zero reason to believe we’re going to see much of a shift in international recruiting in D3. It’s not like coaches are just now realizing there are good players in other countries. I’m sure they’d all LOVE to bring in more international kids, but for reasons unrelated to tennis (that other bloggers touch on below), it’s not going to happen very much, at least at the vast majority of schools (shoutout to NC Wesleyan and Earlham, two notable exceptions). For most teams, the pattern is that you’ll occasionally find an international kid that’s a good fit in all regards, and once in a while, they turn into a stud. Earlier today in the Group Chat we went through some of the top international players of the past few years, and there are certainly some big names (none bigger than Eudice), but there’s nothing that indicates there’s any greater trend than just the occasional international kid having an impact. One thing that could start to happen, though, is that if more American 4 and 5 stars go D1, international kids of a similar level that go D3 might stand out more.
DIIIWest: I don’t think one player’s results will alter the landscape of athletic scholarships. The fact that DIII programs do not have the ability to offer athletic scholarships gives very little motivation for internationals students to take their talents to the DIII setting. Most of these elite international players look to colleges who can offer them money for their tennis skill; as long as DIII programs are unable to offer money for athletics, we will not see an influx of players from outside the United States. Sorry Sorkin, but your fall run did not alter the way scholarships are divvied up.
NewCentral: Similar to how wasabi is generally considered more pungent than spicy, I think that this take has all the makings of being spicy but avoids being so because, while we could very well see an influx of international recruits overall, they won’t impact the overall landscape as much they have to D1 tennis. I don’t believe that the d3 tennis landscape will change to mirror D1, D2, or NAIA tennis with international recruits dominating the top teams because of the cost barriers coupled with a much smaller scholarship purse for international candidates and the existence of significantly easier routes to American College tennis. This take, like wasabi, could be spicy to some just not to me because even if it happened, I don’t think it will impact the landscape in a major way.
NewRegional: To me this take is the celery to the wings. It’s got a place on the table, but it doesn’t really do anything for me. We’ve seen some International All-Americans over the past few years in Murad (Colby), Sikh and Kjellberg (NC Wesleyan), Al-Houni (GAC), Derbani (Midd), Abban (Carthage) and other guys I’m surely forgetting, but I don’t think the success of these guys and now Sorkin will lead to any material changes. I’m sure coaches would love to be able to draw from overseas talent, but don’t have blank checks for recruiting, and the admissions process for International applicants is even more stringent than for domestic students at the top, small academic schools. Except for the occasional breakthrough, I don’t think Sorkin’s success will have any impact on international recruiting.
NE: I don’t really know how to judge this spice (or lack thereof). Like NewCentral (and I assume others will make this argument), I believe this has more to do with tuition rates than anything else. That being said, I find it VERY hard to believe that Sorkin’s successes this fall will be the straw that breaks the international camel’s back. For what it’s worth over the past few years we have seen international recruits increase, if only on the top recruiting lists. We saw 10 international recruits on TRN’s top-25 DIII men’s classes list this past year, after having 5 in both 2016 (3 to UT-Tyler) and 2017, and only one on that same list in 2015. We only have one listed so far for 2019 (shoutout to CMU and Doshi, personally I want him to play just so when CMU plays Hop we get Doshi vs Joshi). That is such a small sample size that attempting to draw any conclusions would be a fool’s errand. I don’t think this is a hot take, this is just a meritless take.
AVZ: Now this is where I lived as a recruiter in D3. I quickly learned that for me to be successful at Earlham, internationals was going to be the way to do it. My teams were about 50/50 on internationals (mostly Russian) and domestic players, but that was only because the school I was at heavily relied on diversity and put the resources behind it to make things happen. For the most part, the top tier academic schools don’t need to do that. Domestic students (and parents) will pay the extra 20k a year just to be a part of one of the top schools in the country, and sometimes world. In my experience, international students are looking for two things. 1) A place to play and 2) the biggest scholarship. The majority of schools don’t offer large scholarships just because you are an international student so while this was very good to me in my coaching career, I don’t expect a big wave in the future.
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I agree with NewRegional that the admission standards at the elite D3 colleges will make it difficult to recruit many international students, especially from non-English speaking countries. Many require very high TOEFL plus SAT/ACT. Note that almost all international recruits at the colleges listed by D3Fan are from English speaking countries, including Eudice. NESCAC has slots to get in high level recruits with lower scores, but my child found a lot of colleges in other conferences require SAT of 1400 or ACT of 32 to get a recruit in, no matter how many stars the player had. That will limit the international pool.
It’s true that D3 schools don’t offer athletic scholarships, but the most well-endowed schools (Amherst, Pomona, Williams, MIT, Wash U, Chicago, Emory, CalTech, Middlebury, Bowdoin, perhaps a few others) have the ability to give a recruit the equivalent through financial aid if they choose. So, I think it’s misleading to quote D1 athletic scholarships as a significant factor at the top of D3.
I think a more interesting question (related to your first hot take) is whether a D3 school that is not in top 10 of endowments can win the national championship.
Yeshiva has players from 5 continents. It’s just part of recruiting to get best players regardless of where they come from. Location of NYC attracts players who want a job in NYC after graduating. Smart students realize a good education and a job right out of college in the desired location makes up for some of the high expenses.