[Sakibomb25]

What was the issue in Axel's case?  Stresses of college coursework?  Or increase responsibilities of young adulthood?  Hopefully it wasn't coaching/skills issues...

I'm not in a poisition to judge but if I were to venture a guess, I'd say it was probably a combination of factors. First, as CT alluded to, junior rankings don't necessarily translate to D1 success. There's probably some differences between genders to this point as men/boys develop along different timelines than women/girls but examples from both genders seem to bear this out.

Second, for as great as the college experience may be for an individual's holisitic development, it's pretty clear imo that it's not ideal for developing the best tennis player possible. When I was loosely affiliated with the men's program many years ago, it was not uncommon to see Gould's players play their best tennis in their freshman year and then slowly go downhill from there. Whether this was attributable to SAE, academics, social stress or just no longer spending 8 hours on the court every day I couldn't say. For some reason, though, Amber Liu and Lele's gals didn't seem to have this problem lol. To Axel's credit, though, he was a 2x Academic All-American and the PAC-12 Scholar Athlete of the Year which is more important than success on the court, especially once it became apparent that he wasn't going to enjoy a serious professional career.

It's interesting you mention this because obviously, it's better if the student athlete develops as a person during college, as opposed to just an athlete. It would appear that those with high potential coming into college (all athletes, not just Stanford ones), but then taper off as the years go on hopefully seem to "find" themselves as a person, as opposed to just being an athlete. I mean you see that with the women's tennis team as well. Student athletes just have so many more distractions, especially at a place like Stanford, where they can't just think about their sport 24/7.

As fans, it can be frustrating to see athletes not improve... but if you take a step back and if it's for the betterment of them as people, then sure, I'm all for it. That's why I think sports fans suck in general. All they see (or care to see) is the actual athlete and not the person. At the end of the day, if the athlete doesn't care about a loss, then why should we? Isn't it good enough that they just tried their best? It was entertainment for two plus hours... and that's how long it should affect us as fans.

Anyway, I'm getting off a tangent here, haha. I'm curious if your assessment of Goldstein's recruits are similar to that of Gould's. We have been having a lot of success recruiting wise (according to the rankings), but just hasn't translated to NCAA titles just quite yet (which I know there a lot of factors as well, the international recruits being one of them).

[Sakibomb25]

What was the issue in Axel's case?  Stresses of college coursework?  Or increase responsibilities of young adulthood?  Hopefully it wasn't coaching/skills issues...

I'm not in a poisition to judge but if I were to venture a guess, I'd say it was probably a combination of factors. First, as CT alluded to, junior rankings don't necessarily translate to D1 success. There's probably some differences between genders to this point as men/boys develop along different timelines than women/girls but examples from both genders seem to bear this out.

Second, for as great as the college experience may be for an individual's holisitic development, it's pretty clear imo that it's not ideal for developing the best tennis player possible. When I was loosely affiliated with the men's program many years ago, it was not uncommon to see Gould's players play their best tennis in their freshman year and then slowly go downhill from there. Whether this was attributable to SAE, academics, social stress or just no longer spending 8 hours on the court every day I couldn't say. For some reason, though, Amber Liu and Lele's gals didn't seem to have this problem lol. To Axel's credit, though, he was a 2x Academic All-American and the PAC-12 Scholar Athlete of the Year which is more important than success on the court, especially once it became apparent that he wasn't going to enjoy a serious professional career.

It's interesting you mention this because obviously, it's better if the student athlete develops as a person during college, as opposed to just an athlete. It would appear that those with high potential coming into college (all athletes, not just Stanford ones), but then taper off as the years go on hopefully seem to "find" themselves as a person, as opposed to just being an athlete. I mean you see that with the women's tennis team as well. Student athletes just have so many more distractions, especially at a place like Stanford, where they can't just think about their sport 24/7.

As fans, it can be frustrating to see athletes not improve... but if you take a step back and if it's for the betterment of them as people, then sure, I'm all for it. That's why I think sports fans suck in general. All they see (or care to see) is the actual athlete and not the person. At the end of the day, if the athlete doesn't care about a loss, then why should we? Isn't it good enough that they just tried their best? It was entertainment for two plus hours... and that's how long it should affect us as fans.

Anyway, I'm getting off a tangent here, haha. I'm curious if your assessment of Goldstein's recruits are similar to that of Gould's. We have been having a lot of success recruiting wise (according to the rankings), but just hasn't translated to NCAA titles just quite yet (which I know there a lot of factors as well, the international recruits being one of them).