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.
 
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