FB: American Rivers Conference

[Walston Hoover]

The same thing this year. Two freshman quarterbacks were gone by Monday.One even left school totally. Why leave school before it starts?

Probably has a girlfriend at home, I bet over half the guys that left school totally had a girlfriend at some other place.

[doolittledog]

I wonder how admission standards have changed over the years.  I applied to Iowa, Cornell, and Dubuque and was accepted at all three schools.  My high school grades were average at best.  All three schools told me my ACT scores alone would get me into their schools regardless of what my grades were.  Maybe going back 20 years not as many kids went the college route so maybe admission standards weren't what they are now. 

[the_mayne_event]

coe is upping it's grade standards

[Floyd in Iowa City]

For all the former players out there, no matter what sport it was.  How were you recruited?

Did college coaches come to you?
Did your high school coach put your name out there to college coaches?
Did you put your name out there to college coaches?
How many schools did you consider?
Did you have a favorite school before any recruiting occurred?
Did you end up at the school you preferred from the beginning? 
Did you consider going to a big state school and giving up sports before going the Div. III route?

-I never considered going to college at a place where I wasn't going to play sports.  The gap between my financial aid packages at Luther versus being a walk-on at UNI were minimal.  Playing high school and college sports was always something I dreamed about doing when I was a kid.  Academics and going to graduate school were also important to me well since so many family members went to college and graduate school.

-My best high school sports were baseball and football, but I was recruited more consistently for football by all of the Iowa Conference schools at the time, Coe, Cornell, and three schools from the D. II North Central Conference (Mankato State, USD, and Augustana).  I always thought Iowa High School Football got more exposure than Baseball because it was during the school year and also in the fall.  In addition to the Iowa Conference schools, I also looked at Briar Cliff, Grand View, UNI, and Mankato for baseball.  Playing one college sport and really focusing on it appealed to me during recruiting because I was a four-sport person in high school, so schools like UNI (too tough to play two sports) or Briar Cliff (no football at the time and a good baseball program) were a clear different situation to me than going to Luther or Central.

-Central (because of football and Schipper), Loras (7-3 type of program back in the late 80s and early 90s), and Cornell (liked the no-nonsense recruiting of Miller for football and they were good in a weak league) were the three current Iowa Conference schools that I looked at harder than the others back then that I never ended up attending.  The one class at a time thing at Cornell ended up pushing them off the list while I just didn't think Loras was as good of a school as Luther and Central.  It wasn't that I thought Loras was at the level of Upper Iowa and William Penn, but they didn't put people in grad school the way Luther did.

-I had no clear Iowa Conference favorite when recruiting began.  Central (the football program) probably impressed the most initially.  It wasn't until I was at Luther that I started to hear all the stories of older generations of my family that were Norsemen and played baseball and football there back when they were a Midwest power (regardless of size) in baseball before WWII.

- As a high school kid following the Iowa Conference and having a guidance counselor for a mom I already had negative academic views of Upper Iowa, William Penn, and Dubuque long before recruiting started.  Billy Penn's biggest recruiting pitch to me for football was playing time and the new uniforms they were getting!

[Walston Hoover]

I've had a lot of relatives go to Luther. 3 of 4 grandparents and several aunts and uncles and a couple cousins. 1 grandpa played basketball, 1 football, and grandma played in the band. I was the exposure to the orange side that any of them had.
What year did you go there Floyd?

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Yes and Yes. Got to be a part of 2 European choir tours and 1 European football trip.
Was one of only 2 people in the freshman class of '99 to make the Wartburg choir all 4 years. Both the director of the choir, Dr, Torkelson, and Coach Willis were very understanding.
Fall was for football while winter, choir took first priority. For 3 offseasons, I went to the early part of workouts (Speed and agility) at 2:30 or 3, don't remember the time, went to choir at 4:30, and then back to the late group of football workouts for lifting and conditioning and was back in my room to eat supper at 8:30 or so.
During the season, we were off on Mondays so I went to choir and was ready for Christmas with Wartburg except for the 2 years we were in the playoffs that we were playing during that time.
Both groups provided different, but very fun experiences and I wouldn't trade them for a lot of things.
I got to meet a ton of people and get to know them very well.
I wasn't unique at Wartburg either. I can think of 5 other guys (3 starters) that did the same thing during their time in school.

I have no music background myself, but at Luther it felt like half of the campus was either involved in music or biology, or both.

It is good to see people stick with the things that they picked the school for in the first place.  There is nothing wrong with changing majors, changing schools, or changing priorities in life, but I have heard way too many people over the years regret that they didn't stick with organized sports (or whatever else) or didn't try when they had the chance.

I hope some of the Wartburg freshmen that are walking away from the game so early in fall practice have really thought it through.  You only get 4-5 years to play the game at that level.  It always seems a little crazy to me when guys quit so early or at any point during a season.  Stick it out for the season and then make a decision about the next season after you have gotten some knowledge and some distance from it.

[doolittledog]

I am aware of the negative academic image Dubuque gets around here.  One of the things my dad told me before leaving for school was you get out of college what you put into it.  Of my three roomates at Dubuque, one is the director of programming at a cable network, another is the executive director of a regional airport in the state of Indiana, and the last I heard from my last roomate he worked for a software firm that sent him all over the world on assignments, the last time we talked he had just got back from six months in Rome.  Another of my friends went on to med school at Iowa.  Of course there are low lifes like me that went on to real estate appraising and another friend of mine that went into construction because he didn't actually like the two majors he gratuated in, but there you go. 

Thanks for the updates regarding what you went through in recruiting.  It's interesting to hear the stories about what went into your decisions regarding the school you chose. 

[Floyd in Iowa City]

I've had a lot of relatives go to Luther. 3 of 4 grandparents and several aunts and uncles and a couple cousins. 1 grandpa played basketball, 1 football, and grandma played in the band. I was the exposure to the orange side that any of them had.
What year did you go there Floyd?

I graduated in 1995.  The half of my family that is Norwegian is the side that went to mostly Luther, Mankato State, or even Waldorf back in the day.  Being an educated Lutheran with Norwegian blood used to drive school choice more than it does now.    

What was the time frame for when your relatives played sports for the Norse?  There were a lot of good football teams under Peterson and Schweizer while the basketball team was good as well under Peterson.  Luther started to drop in basketball when Peterson was retiring around the time when Buzz was taking over at Wartburg.

[Walston Hoover]

Did you play ball Doolittle?

[Walston Hoover]

I've had a lot of relatives go to Luther. 3 of 4 grandparents and several aunts and uncles and a couple cousins. 1 grandpa played basketball, 1 football, and grandma played in the band. I was the exposure to the orange side that any of them had.
What year did you go there Floyd?

I graduated in 1995.  The half of my family that is Norwegian is the side that went to mostly Luther, Mankato State, or even Waldorf back in the day.  Being an educated Norwegian Lutheran used to drive school choice more than it does now.    

What was the time frame for when your relatives played sports for the Norse?  There were a lot of good football teams under Peterson and Schweizer while the basketball team was good as well under Peterson.  Luther started to drop in basketball when Peterson was retiring around the time when Buzz was taking over at Wartburg.

I too come from a family that is half-Norwegian Lutheran.
Surprisingly it is the other half that is German/Swiss/Scottish that more people have gone to Luther.
I was just at my Grandpa's 80th birthday party last weekend in Elgin and looked through a program from when he was at Luther. Who the coach was escapes me but I think the year was 1946 or 47.
My other Grandpa who played football would have been there in the late 40's into the 50's. I've heard a lot of their HS sports stories but I'll have to pry a little more and get some college sports stories.
Not many people can probably say that both their grandfathers are taller than they are, but I can. Kind of weird how that's worked out.

[doolittledog]

Did you play ball Doolittle?

Not football.  I come from the short, unathletic, but sports crazy side of the family.  I was on the tennis team 1 year at Dubuque but tired of getting my butt kicked on a regular basis and I worked a lot of hours to help pay for school.  I was at Dubuque the last time they had a winning season in 1987!!!  That team had a lot of talent but was very undiciplined...a Dubuque trademark it seems until very recently. 

[Walston Hoover]

Short and unathletic is my middle name. Thank the NCAA for allowing cut blocking or I would have been a kicker.

[doolittledog]

So WH, were you from the Aplington or the Parkersburg area.  My wife had cousins from Aplington.  The older graduated from Aplington I think but the younger graduated from A/P. 

[Floyd in Iowa City]

I am aware of the negative academic image Dubuque gets around here.  One of the things my dad told me before leaving for school was you get out of college what you put into it. 

That is always a good point.  I never dreamed of going to Yale or other Ivy League schools because they seemed to far away and I always took pride in the education that could be found in the great state of Iowa.  Most times in life you do get out of something what you put into it.  The name of the school on the degree shouldn't mean everything.  

As the years have gone by my mom is now retired as a guidance counselor.  By the early 2000s she felt like Dubuque had improved its academic reputation somewhat and was doing a good job offering unique majors and programs to attract good students (flight operations, aviation management, etc.).  I know some Dubuque grads that argue about whether Dubuque should be perceived as a lower academic school than Loras.

Dubuque seems like it has more money now than what they may have back in the 1980s.  That perhaps can speak to the fact that not only are some alumni making a dollar or two, but they think Dubuque is worthy of supporting.

I ended up at Luther because it did make a difference to me to be around other serious minded students (mostly) and that Luther was strong in so many different areas in case I switched majors.  Financial stability of the school and standards of living in Decorah are big reasons the faculty is so stable and strong at Luther.  It was a good academic environment.

Small schools with a poor financial footing often have a hard time continuing to offer strong academic programs across the board because they can't pay the faculty (among other reasons).  What is tough for a student who picks a school is when the strong faculty who made a program solid leave for financial reasons.  Does the school make a strong effort to replace quality with quality?  How hard is it for a school like Billy Penn to draw good faculty and keep them?

[HoosierinIowa]

Dolittle,  Amen to the '87 UD team having a lot of talent.  They snapped a very long Central winning streak in the conference and even though the score of the game was close they were the better team that day.  The next year UD had a totally new team which was awful.  I hope for the UD program and the overall strength of the conference that history doesn't repeat itself and UD is able to remain competative.