Can we discuss IMG Academy

Don’t they recruit kids basically like colleges do? Assume the country club sport kids float the tuition for football

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Do they give assistnace or scholarships if you're good enough.

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Yes family friend had a son going there for basically free.

Just like athletes go to private schools in Louisiana. There are scholarships.

I don't understand the appeal. For me the entire appeal of playing high school football was playing with the friends I grew up with and for the community I grew up in. What fun is a bunch of mercenaries who don't know each other going to Florida to assemble some super team and play for a community that doesn't even care.

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don't understand the appeal. For me the entire appeal of playing high school football was playing with the friends I grew up with and for the community I grew up in. What fun is a bunch of mercenaries who don't know each other going to Florida to assemble some super team and play for a community that doesn't even care.

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They don’t even play in an actual state sanctioned league it’s literally just year round select sports. It makes sense for the Cooper Flagg and Liam McNeely types who are destined to be high level D1 and/or pro athletes. I just think about the fact that for every 1 of those guys there are probably 20 other guys going there who end up flaming out and ruin their high school experience and early years of adulthood.

Graduated Pendleton 2007.

No scholarships but a lot of kids are either filthy rich or have a handful of family members that come together to support the annual tuition. I knew a few kids from Texas that had like 5-6 family members that paid the total tuition vs just parents. We had kids who flew home every weekend on parents PJs. It was a wild experience at 15.

I wouldn't say they have many kids that are year over year, unless filthy rich terrible parents. A few kids were there for one year with two summers and then went back home. It isn't for the faint of heart. Very hard at that age to continue pushing yourself to that level. A lot of kids had college paid for after that so the parents just pre-paid for college.

Shoot one of my closest friends (pro LPGA player) her parents basically bankrupted themselves getting her through the program until she went pro and had a $15m sponsorship windfall.
Then there was Peter Uhlein who used to fly private to AJGA events on the Acushnet jet while we all rode the big bus or rode in panel vans.

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so pretty much all your other "sport athletes" float the football program athletes.

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Football players either pay huge amounts up front, or agree to contractual % later.

Tennis is the cash cow at IMG. Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Williams sisters ... hundreds of other professional tennis players have come out of Bollettieri (now IMG).

Golf is coming on strong in producing LPGA and PGA stars -- how many high schools do you know with a full 18-hole golf course on campus?

I went for tennis back in the early 90s when it was Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy.

I remember Nick's tennis academy off 75th street.

Then IMG popped up on 34th street. I had gone to college and beyond by then.

Parents lived off El Conquistador in Palm Court from about 2000-2015 before moving into a retirement home. That was the last development on the road before they extended it to 75th street.

Then they start building on wetland/swamp all those new homes. And now they are building even more. As someone who grew up there in the 60s and 70s, it is sad. anyways...

Always some IMG properties showing up when searching for an AirBNB when visiting. Which we don't do as much now that my parents have passed. Siblings don't rate lol.

My nephew from GA went to tryouts/showcases at IMG for baseball and maybe football as well when he was trying to get college sports scholarships.

Yep. Now the entrance looks like some high end college. We were looking on El Conquistador for a while but eventually bailed on west Bradenton and bought in Sarasota. My shop was in West Bradenton on Cortez road near 75th. I keep my boat out on 301 and drive through there on the way to the island a couple times a week


If you have not been out there in the last year, its blowing up even more. Kinda glad we bought where we did