Harvard Does Signing Day Differently

Across the nation today, students signed on the dotted line to commit to play a sport in college. However, there weren’t any future Crimson signing any dotted lines. As Harvard is a member of the Ivy League, prospective student athletes are not able to receive athletic scholarships and therefore do not sign National Letters of Intent. Instead, a simple verbal agreement is all that they must give to secure his/her spot on one of Harvard’s 42 athletic squads.

With the lack of athletic scholarships, athletes, just like a non-athlete would, go through the need-based financial aid process. However, the chance to earn a first class education often outweighs the lack of an athletic scholarship for many student-athletes in the decision making process.

Even though there are no letters of intent technically signed, many players declare their verbal intent to play at Harvard around this date as their teammates officially sign to their respective schools. Harvard may not stand up in terms of volume of recruits compared to schools in bigger conferences such as the SEC, but it stands to gain some valuable freshman in this year’s recruiting classes.

One future freshman that has declared his intent to play with Harvard is football player Tanner Lee from Daphne, Alabama. Lee, who plays defensive back, also had offers from Army and Wofford, but chose Harvard after visiting the campus January 18th and 19th. As a senior, he had 71 tackles and two interceptions while retaining the number one spot in his class academically.

Crimson football will also welcome Jack Stansell from Dothan High School. The Tiger senior plays tight end. He was debating between a chance to try out as a walk-on player at Auburn University and the offer from Harvard.

“It’s an absolutely surreal experience,” Stansell said in an interview with a local news station after his declaration of intent. “I’ve been looking forward to it since I started playing football for real and once I started high school. I never imagined I’d be signing somewhere like Harvard. I always was hoping it would be some southeastern conference team but really this is an even better opportunity for me just academically and for the rest of my life and I’m very excited.”

Although much of the publicity on National Signing Day is on football players, athletes from other sports made their commitments as well. Jack Kelly of Ponte Vedra High School in Florida will join the men’s crew team, Caroline Chagares of Ramapo High School in New Jersey will join the women’s soccer team, and Kanon Dean of Lowell, Michigan will compete for the wrestling team.

Because of the lack of official letters of intent that bind student-athletes to their school, Harvard’s future athletes could back out of their verbal agreements at any time and choose to go elsewhere. However, this is quite rare.

With the football team coming off of an Ivy League Title, the men’s basketball team making it to the NCAA tournament in the 2012-2013 season, and countless other teams excelling in their respective leagues, Harvard’s ability to recruit athletes is growing.

So far in this academic year, many freshmen from the class of 2017 have made significant impacts for their teams. In men’s hockey, freshman Alexander Kerfoot is third on the team with six goals on the season. In women’s soccer, freshman Midge Purce was named Ivy League Player and Rookie of the Year. She was the first freshman to ever receive the honor of Player of the Year as she led the team with 11 goals. Field hockey’s Marissa Balleza led the team with 12 goals in 17 games in her first season with the Crimson. Although there are still several months before we will see these new recruits, they are definitely players to watch.