At the local Army base, Fort Monmouth, in New Jersey there's a Prepatory school for the Military Academy, where, I assume, promising athletes can be sent following high school to prepare them for the rigors of the USMA. I don't know what their entrance or selection criteria are but I believe a few slots a West Point are reserved for prep school grads. I occasionally see their sports scores in the paper; they play local community colleges and local college freshman/JV teams. I haven't noticed an hockey scores. > >In defense of Army (no pun intended): > > > >They *can't* recruit athletes; they have congressionally mandated admissions > > >standards, and every applicant must meet those standards; if any happen to > >be exceptional athletes in any sport, that's gravy. > > >Their student body is truly national; each Representative gets only so many > >slots for members of his/her district; Senators get slots, too. This means > >that the distribution of students at any service Academy is fairly close to > >the distribution of people within the United States (point being, you only > >get so many kids from Minnesota, Michigan, Maine, Massachusetts, etc., then > >you have to hope those are your hockey players and not your basketball or > >football or lacrosse players, because then you have to get your hockey > >players from Georgia, Oklahoma, Idaho, etc) > > I think that this is a little misleading; I believe that the service > academies have a number of slots available in addition to the one or two > nominations that each Representative can make from their district. I believe > that I read that the academies have slots specifically reserved for athletes > and others with special skills. Those slots are over and above the regional > slots. Thus, Air Force, Navy, and Army are able to bring in a good number > of athletes who might not be academically impressive enough to merit the > nomination of the Congressional representative. I believe that at most > of the academies, there are several hundred positions reserved for athletes. > If I remember correctly, over half of those athletic slots are for football. HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.