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Recruiting Faces of Sports: Mihir Kumar

By David Zheng
[email protected]

While it does happen, freshman Mihir Kumar, who played varsity number one singles for the men’s tennis team this past fall, said collegiate recruiting of middle school athletes would not be as beneficial in tennis. “I don’t think it’s that good of a thing because with tennis, it’s hard to tell how good you’re going to be at a young age,” Kumar said. “So recruiting early doesn’t have that many advantages, so I don’t think too many colleges do that for tennis, but they might.”

BOOK IT: Freshman Mihir Kumar reads a college handbook. Instead of relying on recruting, he said he prefers to find colleges on his own. NICK JOHNSON / PHOTOWith college athletics becoming more and more competitive in some sports, colleges have started trying to gain an upper hand on other schools by extending their recruiting process to include even middle school athletes. This includes basketball players primarily, but has extended to also include athletes involved in other sports like tennis.

However, Athletics Director Jim Inskeep noted some of the potential issues that could come with recruiting middle school athletes, regardless of sport. “You don’t know how a 13 or 14-year-old will develop by the time they’re 17 or 18,” Inskeep said. “I think socially and mentally, there are issues there. I can’t imagine for a middle school student that recruiting is going to have a positive impact on them. Their head is going to get extremely large in those circumstances, and I think it’s hard for them to continue to concentrate on getting better without that enormous ego getting bigger.”

As for Kumar, he said he’s gotten limited correspondence from schools.     “I’ve gotten mail from colleges, but usually from smaller colleges, so it’s nothing I’m interested in,” Kumar said. “At tournaments I’ve seen coaches and talked to them, but I wouldn’t call that recruiting. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m trying to do.”

Although it is an issue, Inskeep said collegiate recruiting of middle school athletes is not one that might be as prevalent as people think.

“Overall, it has not been an issue we have seen in our community for example,” Inskeep said. “If there is a solution, it’s going to have to come from the NCAA, and I think they’re reluctant to do that at this point. It will become an issue at some point, and I think sometimes common sense prevails among college coaches as to how many resources they want to commit to looking at potential middle school players down the road.”

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