How does the recruiting process for Division 1 wrestling at Ivy League schools work? Originally answered on March 28th, 2014
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Answer by Christopher VanLang, College 103 lber
A caveat is that I never decided to undergo the recruiting circuit but my middle brother was being recruited at MIT and Princeton and ultimately walked onto Stanford and the youngest brother was an 2x New England Champion and All American who was being actively recruited across the nation and got to talk with Rob Koll from Cornell. My high school sent a few folks to Princeton. Thus, despite my lack of personal experience with the subject matter, I'm probably the rare intersection of people who have anything meaningful to say about recruiting, people who wrestled, and people who spend enough time on Quora to care to write a lengthy answer on this question.
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The complicated thing about DI recruiting is that wrestling coaches fall under the same limitations and restrictions that NCAA Football and Basketball coaches fall under. Thus, I think you'll save everyone a lot of time by reading up on the rules about what phone calls coaches are allowed to make and what questions they are allowed to ask you. Knowing this before hand makes everyone's life much easier. That way, you can make the most of your limited interaction with coaches and have productive conversations with them.
The next step is to give a reason for coaches to pay attention to you. Obviously being good at wrestling helps. Unfortunately, New England isn't a hotbed of wrestling so getting scouts to see you vs. going to Ohio and Lehigh Valley will be tough. To compensate, I would try to record a lot of your matches so that you have lots of game tape to share. Protip, don't ask your parents to film, they tend to have other emotions to deal with while watching your match. Typically coaches will ask for some film and having a quality well edited video will help.
One event that colleges do pay a lot of attention to are the Fargo championships. Getting a lot of experience in the Freestyle and Greco-Roman circuit not only gets you experience but will help show how serious you are about wrestling and gets the attention of teams. In New England, Northeast Elite Wrestling and Doughboy's have been traditionally good. [1]
Camps are another way to do this. One of my friends from wrestling camp ultimately got recruited to Oklahoma and he largely did this by going to camps, finding other really good people to scramble with and making sure that important people were watching. He picked a bout with Penn State's starting 125 lber and held his own, a guaranteed way to catch the eyes of the staff. Since you're particularly interested in Ivy League wrestling, I would suggest going to Jay Weiss's Gold Medal Camp or Cornell's Intensive camp. Ken Chertow also holds a big camp in Mass.
One really good advantage of being in the New England wrestling circuit is that you have easy access to Mass Wrestling which is run by Mike Atlas and his really awesome team. The quality of the discussion and the knowledge behind the college recruiting process is great. They also provide a free wrestling recruiting service with the unselfish hope that getting more and more New England wrestlers like Robert Hamlin into quality programs will important the quality of the competition in the region. [2]
[1] Forums / Tournaments, Clubs, Clinics, Camps, and Mats / Master Offseason Club & Camp List
[2] Forums / College Wrestling / FREE College Recruiting