If you’re a high school recruit competing for an athletic scholarship offer, have you defined your college experience expectations? 

Do you want to compete at the highest level possible and try to win a championship for your team – whether that’s a conference, regional, or national championship?

Or, will you be completely happy if you’re enjoying college, making lifelong friendships, and possibly participating on a junior varsity college team to stay physically active and spend more time with some of your new friends?

Many colleges at both the NCAA and NAIA level use their athletic teams to boost their enrollment numbers. 

But, some programs take that even a step further by adding junior varsity teams to the athletic program.  Those coaches might recruit you to join their teams with the opportunity of being promoted to the varsity level at some point in your college career, but they may primarily be looking to just boost college enrollment.

Don’t get me wrong – if you will be happy being on the JV team and not having as many commitments on your time as you would have with practice and travel commitments of a varsity program, then that’s great.

The point I want to make is to be sure you ask – especially at smaller colleges – if they have both a varsity and junior varsity team in your sport, and where the coach sees you fitting into the program.  As the article that I’ve linked below describes, the coach may be more interested in your participation to boost college enrollment rather than for the talent that you can provide to help their team win.
http://blog.naia.org/index.php/2017/11/06/goshen-college-boosting-recruitment-with-junior-varsity-athletics/

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