The recent successes of Urban’s sports teams may have raised the school’s athletic standing among peers at other Bay Area independent schools but have not yet translated to increased recruiting by colleges known for their sports.  

  Joe Skiffer, the Urban School Athletic Director, said “eight current seniors are considering participating in college athletics next year … [but] not all of them were recruited to do so.”  

  It remains up to the athletes themselves to showcase their talents to colleges. This may have more to do with the choices of Urban athletes rather than Urban’s reputation as less athletically focused than comparable Bay Area independent schools such as San Francisco University High School. According to Skiffer, “there’s very little recruitment that goes through [the Urban athletic] office due to the large amount of athletes that play club sports.”  

  Those athletes that do decide to participate in the recruitment process do most of the legwork. Taghi Amundson (‘18), a member of the Boys Varsity Baseball team, said that he has been building his profile on NCSAsports.org, a website that lets student athletes view and post statistics from their leagues “in order to get noticed by other coaches.” In his experience, the transition from high school to college athletics has been less of a recruitment process and more of a “job search”.

  “Once I’d contacted a few [coaches], and really built my profile and recorded some video, I did get a few emails from schools, though one thing I noticed is that all the schools I got emails from, I didn’t really want to go to. The ones that I wanted to go to, I had to reach out to,” Amundson said.

  On the whole, Urban students often play college sports as walk-ons, but do not tend to go through a typical “recruitment” process, in which colleges scout for talent at the high school level. Though this is influenced by the prevalence of club sports and Urban’s pattern of sending many students to Division 3 schools, athletes making their own paths to college athletics may just be a part of the school’s culture.

  Serena Richard, a senior planning to attend Willamette University who was offered a spot on their Division 3 soccer team, is unsure whether she wants to continue her athletic career.

  “I had a few coaches contact me but I did not pursue recruitment because I knew I wanted to choose my school for academics and community first, and then think about the soccer aspect. However, I am excited that the school I chose allows me to play for the team if I desire.” said Richard.