Recruits deserve the freedom to choose

From the Sidelines
   By Elisabeth Marshall

Every year, Ivy League coaches grapple with the same annoying problem: finding high school recruits that will continue to compete through all four years of college. And every year, coaches complain about the irritation these athletes cause when they later quit their teams. An indignant righteousness often accompanies these complaints—as a coach recently explained in The Daily Princetonian, "I find myself questioning the integrity of those students [who quit]...[it's] as if they got what they wanted from me and then walked away." Similar situations often arise at Yale. One Yale ex-hockey player explained, "When I quit, my coach said something along the lines of, `I helped you get in here, and now you've left me.' He kept saying how disappointed he was in me."

However frustrating it might be when a recruited athlete leaves his or her team, it does not justify manipulative guilt trips on the part of our athletic leaders. A recruited athlete, like any other student, should have total freedom in choosing his or her own extracurricular activities—even if that means quitting the sport he or she came to school to play. Athletes have the right to leave teams when they want, and these decisions should be made without fear of resentment or guilt.

Whenever an athletic program pushes its team members so much that remaining on the team threatens players' physical or psychological well-being, those players shouldn't think twice about quitting. When an athlete is encouraged against his will to play with a nagging injury, for example, he should leave before such inappropriate pressure leads to a more permanent problem. Similarly, whenever a sport puts excessive psychological pressure on an athlete—as sports such as lightweight crew can sometimes do when they induce eating disorders in those trying to "make weight"—a player should leave and not look back. Though the most diehard coaches might protest, athletes must quit whenever sports become damaging.

Yet sometimes the damage is more subtle, and the objections less blatantly valid. Players quit for many reasons; some get sick of spending so much time at an activity that "kills you, mentally and physically," as one ex-football player said. According to an ex-soccer player, sitting on benches too often during games begins to render the experience "a big waste of time in which you could do other things." Others simply grow tired of the game they once loved. Each of these objections, while less obviously legitimate as reasons to quit, nevertheless justifies a player's decision to do so. The justification is simple: players owe their sports programs no more time than they desire to give them. They are free to leave whenever they no longer find their sport fulfilling.

Some will argue that athletes are taking advantage of the Ivy League's prohibition of athletic scholarships when recruits quit, since no monetary compensation binds them to their sports. However, the ban of athletic scholarships was instituted for good reason. Colleges are, at their core, academic institutions, and students must have the financial freedom to pursue academia in the manner that they feel is the most fruitful. Paying students to play sports for college teams, however indirect these payments might be, subverts the nature and purpose of higher education. It bolsters the integrity of the Ivy League that its schools don't give these scholarships.

Granted, players do benefit from their athletic status during the admissions process. Some argue that recruited athletes owe their dedication to the teams and the coaches that helped them get here in the first place. However, this assertion (and the thinly disguised scorn that often accompanies it) should never influence an athlete's decision. If someone's admittance letter can only be justified by his future athletic performance, then a school's administration needs to reevaluate its admissions policies. Otherwise, every student should assume that his letter of acceptance means what it is supposed to mean: that he has shown himself to be capable of focusing his energies toward productive ends and proven himself to be academically competitive. In some cases, dedication to a high school sport helps to demonstrate this—but it never irrevocably binds the student to that same specific activity once he arrives on campus.

All of this isn't to say that athletes should quit their teams the moment they feel any sort of hint of discomfort. When someone joins a team—or any other extracurricular organization—he implicitly agrees to dedicate some amount of time and effort to accomplish what he volunteered to do. However, once he decides that the advantages of leaving outweigh the advantages of staying, he should be entirely free to go. And the rest of us—coaches and students included—should show him courtesy, and respect his decision to leave.

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