Thank you.

I enjoyed reading “Striking The Balance” in last winter’s Middlebury Magazine. Recently, I read “The Game Of Life” and “Reclaiming The Game” and agree with the author’s analysis concerning the academic-athletic divide.
My experience as an athlete at Middlebury highlights the conflict between athletics and academics. I was one of those parias, “the recruited athlete”, although my acedemic credentials would have earned me admission to the college independently.
I was a pre-med student and a mathematics major(there was no clustering in this department). My typical day consisted of morning classes, afternoon science labs, rushing to basketball practice, and evening studying. When I participated in daily practice I worked hard, but that was not enough. To be successful in high profile sports, one needs to devout twice the time and effort to training in addition to routine practice. I knew this, but my main objectives at Middlebury were to develope an intellectual foundation and to get accepted to medical school. I loved playing basketball, but I had to set limits. As a result, I did not develope my full athletic potential, to the detriment of the team. To this day I feel guilty about letting down my team and coach. This frustrated Coach Alaimo very much, but I hold him in very high regard for never forcing me to compromise my studies.
Fortunately, I did go to medical school and have had a rewarding career in medicine( I became a cardiac surgeon).
Middlebury has had a profound influence on my life, for which I am very gratfull.
The role of athletics in universities is irrational.I am a strong supporter of college athletics, but their purpose should be to develope character and promote health. I do not have any great incite to solve the academic-athletic divide, but I support the NESCAC’s effort to address the issue. The situation for Division I is hopeless. Division III strikes a better balance. No student should be admitted if they truly are not qualified academically(the opportunity costs are to high). Athletic ability should have equal weight with other extracurricular endeavors. Various athletic activities should be promoted for all students to encourage good health, not solely emphasizing varsity level sports. I guess I am too naive.
I appreciate your good work for the college.

Sincerely,

Kevin F. Ducey

Dear Ron:

Thank you for giving alumni (class of 1980) and parents (class of 2011.5) the opportunity to weigh in on this important topic. I support the conclusion you reached in your D3 vs. D4 blog. Having played football and lacrosse in Middlebury (1977-1980), a big frustration then was that our teams could not advance to NCAA tournament play. In lacrosse we would have qualified in 3 of 4 years. We hailed Middlebury’s decision to play in NCAA tournaments in the 1990’s. It was a statement that our students can compete at the highest level in the classroom and on the field. Middlebury has gone on to prove that to be true.

Athletes want to compete at the highest level of their capabilities. If the NESCAC teams were getting trounced, then the decision to form a new division would be easier. But our teams are competing with high academic standards and stringent off-season restrictions and we are still winning on the field. I happen to think that the NESCAC philosophy is a reason our teams are so successful on the national scale. Sports are fun when they are not a job, and D1 and many D3 schools make sports a job. Middlebury athletes have the freedom to choose where and when they will work out, and how much time they want to dedicate to their primary sport in the off season. Heck, many Middlebury athletes still play two sports. That is a fantastic situation in 2007. They are having fun and that makes a difference!

Today, Middlebury attracts outstanding student who compete at high levels in many different disciplines. Middlebury and NESCAC can continue to have it both ways. By maintaining high standards and winning against schools with lower standards, Middlebury sets the perfect example.

In your words, “It seems to me that striving for the best of both worlds should guide our position on this issue: that is, providing the best competition for our student-athletes while, at the same time, applying the necessary policies to ensure a healthy balance between our academic and athletic programs. That would mean choosing to remain in D-III while retaining the most stringent guidelines to ensure the kind of overall education we seek for our students.”

Overall, the debate is worthwhile as it forces a college to “check its compass.” And the time may come when other D3 schools become “mini-D1″ programs and NESCAC and other like-minded schools just can’t compete. That may be the time to consider a move. As for now, Peter Mellen’s practical advice seems like the best I have heard. Keep striving for success with your common-sense approach to sports.

Best Regards,

Paul Scheufele (1980) p (2011.5)

I appreciate that you wrote the article in the winter edition of the Middlebury Magazine. The role of athletics in the NESCAC is clearly a touchy situation and I am glad to see that you are taking comments to understand how the Middlebury community feels.

I have played for Middlebury College on the tennis team the last four years and have never missed anything as much as competing in the NESCAC and Division III.

I’d like to first respond to the question, “Should we really care about a larger DIII?” I think the clear answer is yes. The Division is growing and growing and at some point down the road there will be some kind of change. My question is why it is necessary for the NESCAC to move out of the division when the conference meets higher standards. It seems to me that the conference with the lowest standards should have to be the first to move to a DIV. Instead of starting the movement from DIII to DIV at the top, why not put pressure on the bottom. Selling the NCAA on raising the bar I am sure would be no easy task. For me, It just doesn’t seem right for the leading conference to feel the need to leave the division because two many teams with lower goals are joining.

What may have become clear is that I feel like the NESCAC moving to a DIV would have a very negative impact on the quality of competition. This can be seen in NESCAC football. Due to the fact that there is no national bid for football in the NESCAC there is little attention paid to the conference for this particular sport aside from the publicity Williams and Amherst got for being the oldest running rivalry. Last fall one of the greatest Middlebury football teams ever was not even mentioned while ESPN ran game day over at Williams. Why? With no chance for Tufts or Middlebury to move on to a national championship, tradition over at Williams was more important.

This brings me to the question of whether winning and competition really is important. I think it absolutely is. Learning and growing as a person is all about setting goals for yourself and working to achieve those goals in the pursuit of success. Whether a person is becoming a corporate executive or trying to become more voluntarily active in their community I think this holds true. As a tennis player at Middlebury, I learned many things about life that I probably would have not learned without it. The single most important thing I learned from the pressure of winning is that having regretted that you didn’t work hard enough is the most painful aspect of a loss. We had a high degree of success my freshmen year at Middlebury and proceeded to loose heartbreaker after heartbreaker at the end of the next three seasons. While it was hard to swallow I learned some valuable lessons. After two seasons of missing the goal and not being in the best shape possible, I realized that this pain of knowing I could have done more was what really hurt the most. I took what I learned and realized that this not only applied to my physical fitness and tennis but all aspects of my life including the time and effort I was putting into academics. Learning from the experience, the following year I gave both my academic and physical fitness the attention they needed.

The competitive mentality athletes bring to Middlebury is one of the things the working world loves about the school. That mentality can be formed in both the classroom and on the court or field.

Whatever happens as this process takes its course remember that athletics bring a significant value to Middlebury. History shows sports have brought people of the world together in spectacular ways.

I would echo many of the commments made above and would agree, as would my daughter, that Middlebury (and NESCAC) ought to stay in Division III.

The continual ability of Middlebury (and other NESCAC schools) to attract the best and the brightest and have its’ team compete and be successful at the highest levels of Division III should be a source of enormous pride. As a parent of a current two-sport athlete, I can tell you that these teams relish the chance to play (and beat) teams that may appear, at least on paper, to have significant advantages–longer pre-season, lesser academic standards,etc.

The triumph of Middlebury men’s soccer has been well-documented and rightly so. As well, last fall, the field hockey team, as underdog, picked off Messiah, The College of New Jersey and Salisbury State (seeded # 7,4 and 2 respectively) before losing to Bowdoin ( the #1 seed). At least today, I fail to see that we are being disadvantaged.

Perhaps things will change dramatically in the future but for now, the ability of our sports teams to be competitive while maintaining the highest standards should be the envy of every Division III school!

I think the comment in the January issue of US Lacrosse magazine regarding picking Missy Foote as one of the top ten lacrosse coaches of the last 10 years (from a universe of men’s and women’s, DI,II and III, and professional) says it all.

“Like Pluger (from the College of New Jersey), Foote has four Division III women’s titles to her credit in the USL era (1999,2001,2002,2004). To do so under the academic and institutional rigors of the NESCAC is laudable.”

Caroline McBride ’75 P’04 ’09

I have read “The Game of Life” and “Reclaiming the Game”, and I think Middlebury has found the appropriate balance.
I think there should only be one D3 division, and Middlebury should take a leadership role in articulating why our restrictions as to length of season, missing classes, practices outside of season, red shirting, or whatever, is the standard that all D3 institutions should embrace.

I think it important that all student athletes have the opportunity to be exposed to other aspects of their schools such as lectures, concerts, and meeting new and different people.

For those who choose to compete at the D1 level, I often hear stories of disillusionment centered on the time commitment. The story revolves around the comment that “the coach feels that they just own me”.

It may be that Middlebury becomes less competitive in a larger D3 universe than they are now, but that may not happen, and it really does not bother me.

NESCAC is not competitive nationally in Football, and most are willing to live with that reality.

Middlebury is not and will not be competitive in men’s golf nationally, as the majority of the better players will choose a warmer climate.

That does not mean that the athletes on these two teams do not compete as hard as they can, and have a wonderful experience doing so!

George Cady ’72

This e-mail is in response to your article in the Winter Middlebury Magazine regarding varsity athletics. I found the issues you raised about “Striking a Balance” to be both thought provoking and important.

Perhaps it would be useful to provide a bit of personal information so that you will have some context to evaluate my comments. First, while at Midd I played, but not very well, football and lacrosse, the former without facemasks and the latter with wooden sticks. Second, for a number of years I was a small college faculty representative to the NCAA. In short, I have some interest in and knowledge about the questions you posed.

In the interest of brevity, let me try to list some opinions about the central questions noted in your article.

1- Is preferential treatment regarding admission of athletes fair? While I would wish that athletic teams were made up of those students who happened to enroll, I know this is not realistic. The answer than is yes it is fair as long as those athletes are clearly qualified to meet the academic demands of the college and that we make similar efforts to enroll students with exceptional non-athletic talents.

2- Do recruited athletes create an unhealthy subculture? Are such students likely to develop friendships with other athletes? Of course, but I doubt that their friendships will be exclusively among other athletes. Musicians are likely to share interests and friendship based on their abilities, but again not is an exclusive way. Finally, these kinds of mutual interest friendships are based on performance and not any ascribed characteristics such as may have been the case with fraternities. (Yes, I was a member of DU). On balance then, I think the answer is no.

3- Should we join an athletic division that stresses a limited role for athletics? Yes. Let me try to explain why. You noted that the captains of some of our teams argued that we beat teams with lesser standards any way, so why worry? What is wrong with that answer is that it makes winning the criterion of choice. I am all for fair competition and I believe that if you don’t want to win you shouldn’t play, but that said, it is not the purpose of an academic institution to produce “winning teams.”

I believe that Middlebury and NESCAC ought to be leaders in promoting balance and integrity in college sports. In some cases that is not how they are perceived. Academic friends of mine ask how it is possible for Midd to win so many games and particularly so many national championships if the college is really living up to the supposed standards of NESCAC? This suspicion of “cutting corners” extends to NESCAC itself as its members win an extraordinary number of national championships. The recent article in Sports Illustrated about the Trinity College squash team has seemed to confirm the notion that NESCAC schools will pay any price to win. I understand that squash is not a NESCAC sport, but the article does the conference no favors.

In sum, I hope Middlebury and NESCAC will support the development of a new Division IV with rules that promote increased emphasis on shared high academic values and a shared athletic philosophy. That philosophy ought stress fair competition and discourage programs like Mt. Union’s in football, Kenyon’s in swimming and Salisbury State’s in lacrosse. Middlebury will still win championships, but more importantly, it will have done the right thing.

Thank you for your patience in reading this long message.

Wayne G. Reilly ‘57

I enjoyed reading your article in this month’s Middlebury magazine. My daughter, Alexi, is a first year and also plays for Bill Mandigo’s hockey team. I would like to share our family’s perspective on this issue.

First, I understand that hockey is one of the sports that Middlebury and NESCAC have been able to excel in, and this may not be true in other sports. However, my gut tells me that the sports in which NESCAC schools are least competitive with other D-III schools would be the so-called money sports of football and basketball. Even if D-III as a whole relaxes restrictions, the resulting competitive imbalance will likely continue to only affect these sports. I believe this has been proven at Division I already.

I can tell you from our daughter’s perspective that Middlebury gave her an opportunity to play hockey at the highest level without compromising her education. She could have played hockey at the Division I level, however the schools that had openings at her position simply could not offer her the academic opportunities that she had worked so hard to make available.

Under current Division III rules, the best and the brightest still choose NESCAC schools because they can take advantage of the educational opportunities while competing at the highest level. No matter what the other D-III institutions do, they cannot change the fact that there are smart kids who can not only run, throw, and skate; they can do these things while computing the area of a circle. No matter how many Athlete-Students take advantage of relaxed D-III standards, Student-Athletes will continue to choose NESCAC. As long as they do, giving them the opportunity to compete at the highest level is one way the NESCAC schools can fulfill their cherished mantra of diversity, no less important than giving a student from Ghana an opportunity to excel in Biology.

I say let the other D-III institutions relax whatever standards they choose. The smart kids will still make the smart choice. Don’t punish them for being bright.