The Game PLAN

Join the soccer team! Take up fencing! How about shot put? The advice tossed at athletically inclined kids hoping to get into good colleges starts early, as do solicitations from admission advisors who specialize in sports. If only it were that easy to cross the finish line.

- JAMES S. MURPHY

No children take up sports in grade school because they're hoping to play in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) one day. Even if their parents are standing on the sidelines with dreams of the Ivy League in their heads, the kids are there to have fun and be with friends. That was the only reason Andy, a senior who attends a Catholic high school in Pennsylvania, started playing football and stuck with it all through high school.

When Andy (I've changed his name and all the others in this article) was in fourth grade a coach noticed him picking up his sister from cheerleading one afternoon. He was easy to spot. He had always been one of the biggest kids in his grade, and he was frequently teased for being overweight. When the coach asked him if he wanted to play football, Andy replied that his mom would never let him play anything that would "hurt my beautiful brain." But his parents gave in, because they thought it might help him make friends. It worked. Andy made lots of friends, though he wasn't that crazy about the football part. From the start he imagined himself as a tight end but was always assigned to play offensive line. Coach after coach took one look at his size and told him that his job was to knock people out of the way.