It has been mentioned in a few posts that players were taking time off to "focus on grades". On the surface this seemed to be a noble and seemingly smart decision. Especially for a student that needs to get their grades up. The more I thought about it, it did seem to be contradictory to what my own experiences have been.
My own daughter always seemed to get better grades(High School and College) in season than during the off-season. I always felt that the demands of the schedule forced the student to better ration their time. During the recruiting process, just about every coach echoed the same thing.
I did a quick web search and the research take seems to contradict what I thought:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10. ... lCode=jsea
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-11-30/ ... e-athletes
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/ ... s-compete/
What have your/players experiences been? Does the level(DI, DII, DIII) have any bearing? What about the travel at some of the Big College programs?