Kevin Weiss

Cosette Anderson moved clear across the country from Seattle when she was in seventh grade to attend Saddlebrook Preparatory School — with the hope of developing her golf game.

Tennis player Noah Schachter also ventured to the school from the Pacific Northwest.

Meanwhile other athletes, including Aline Krauter and Sifan He, moved even greater distances to attend the renowned prep school. They crossed international waters, with Krauter coming from Germany, and He making the trek from China.

Students arriving on the Wesley Chapel campus have specific goals in mind. They are aiming to earn a Division I college athletic scholarship and to compete in professional sports.

Anderson, Schachter, Krauter and He have achieved part one. Each of them signed National Letters of Intent during a signing day ceremony on Nov. 9.

Schachter signed with Texas A&M University; Anderson signed with Elon University in North Carolina. Krauter and He, meanwhile, intend to spend the next four years golfing in California, for Stanford and Pepperdine universities, respectively.

The fall signing period wrapped up last month, whereby several student-athletes from The Laker/Lutz News coverage area went from prospective recruits to college signees.

The designated period allowed athletes who have made verbal commitments to a university to officially accept a scholarship by signing with their chosen school.

It holds particular meaning for sports academies, including Saddlebrook, where many students have professional sports aspirations, and work tirelessly everyday to reach that goal.

Saddlebrook Prep has 85 students, and caters to grades 3 through 12; all but three students actively compete in tennis or golf.

Tuition for the prep school and golf academy costs nearly $49,475 annually for non-boarding students and $64, 875 for boarders. Its tennis academy — combined with prep schooling — is slightly less expensive, at $42,060 a year for non-boarders and $60,665 for boarders.

School leaders say Saddlebrook’s “world-class training facilities and strong academic focus” set it apart from other tennis or golf boarding schools.

Student-golfers are coached on the resort’s two Arnold Palmer-designed courses, while tennis players train daily with their coaches on 45 tennis courts.

Both sports programs allow students to participate in local, regional and national tournaments, traveling as part of the Saddlebrook Prep team, or individually, depending on the tournament and player.

More than 50 percent of its student-athletes wind up signing a college scholarship or some type of grant-in-aid agreement, headmaster Chris Wester said.

Making international connections
Saddlebrook Prep’s record of success annually attracts dozens of boarding students from more than 20 countries, including such places as Sweden, Germany, France, Poland, Czech Republic, Russia, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Australia and Brazil, among others.

About half of Saddlebrook’s enrollment consists of international students.

Many discover Saddlebrook Prep by competing in international tournaments and by word of mouth.

That was the case for China’s Sifan He, who enrolled in September.

The Chinese student said a friend recommended the school to her, and she believes the boarding school experience has proven worthwhile — socially, academically and athletically. Her college of choice—Pepperdine— consistently fields one of the nation’s top 10 Division I women’s golf programs, and is widely regarded as one of the nation’s premier private institutions.

She gave Saddlebrook high marks. “The program here is very good. All the people here are very friendly, and they’re willing to help you. I like all the staff here — they’re really, really nice. And, the facilities here are very good.”

Aline Krauter arrived at Saddlebrook during her sophomore year, from Germany.

Krauter, an elite golfer in her own right, won the 2016 German International Amateur Championship. More recently, she finished seventh this year at the Portuguese International Ladies Amateur and 22nd at the Annika Invitational in Sweden. She also placed in the final 64 at the Ladies British Open Amateur Championship, and competed in the European Girls Team Championship in Finland.

Krauter said the move from Germany to Wesley Chapel wasn’t a huge transition, having attended an international school in her native country.

“I was used to having an international environment, so it wasn’t too much of a difference,” she said.

Something she couldn’t do in Germany, however, was golf everyday.

As soon as she finishes school at 12:05 p.m., she can head straight out to the golf course, she said.

Saddlebrook’s daily schedule is modeled after the NCAA format for athlete participation; twenty hours is the maximum number of organized practice hours at the NCAA level.

High school students have classes from 7:30 a.m. to 12:05 p.m. They then practice from 1 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. — which includes fitness time.

The boarding program, meanwhile, requires additional responsibilities of its students, such as washing clothes, cleaning dishes and making beds — helping to create a collegial atmosphere on campus.

“Our kids master time management, whereas kids that maybe went to a public school and went to golf every other day…they may not have the same time management skills that our kids would have, because they’ve been living it for a period of time,” Wester said.

Some sports academies are criticized for not emphasizing academics enough.

Wester argues that’s not the case for Saddlebrook Prep, which is fully accredited through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement (SACS-CASI), and the Florida Council of Independent Schools (FCIS).

Seventy percent of the school’s faculty members hold master’s degrees.

Said Wester, “If you look at where our student-athletes matriculate to, and the pathways that we’ve created with universities, our academics are deemed to be rigorous enough for Stanford, Texas A&M, Virginia, Florida from last year, Vanderbilt, Duke. They all know — because we have sent students there previously — what they’re going to get.”

In addition to the four athletes that signed last month, Wester anticipates more than 11 more seniors — out of its 22-member senior class — to sign some sort of scholarship in the spring signing period in March.

Besides strong academics, advanced sports instruction helps make the reality of a college scholarship possible.

All of Saddlebrook’s tennis and golf instructors played at the collegiate level; a majority played their sport professionally, too.

Mark Hirschey is the director of instruction for Saddlebrook Golf Academy.

He said coaches and athletic trainers assist students on technique, decision-making and in-game strategy.

Hefty focus is also given to strength and flexibility training, and mental fitness—encompassing visualization, proper breathing during to pre- and post-shot routines, and positive self-talk.

Being around other motivated, likeminded athletes, too, provides an invaluable experience.

“It creates a competition that helps them improve and, at the same time, learn to handle the pressure. They not only learn from the coaches, but also by the example the better players set,” Hirschey wrote in an e-mail to The Laker/Lutz News.

Saddlebrook also accommodates a tournament travel schedule during the school year where athletes can compete throughout Florida and the U.S., and even the Bahamas and Cayman Islands. Athletes can compete, as long as they make up their classwork when they return.

“We have designated time for them to come back and get one-on-one instruction with their teachers, so that they stay academically sound,” Wester explained.

Schachter, who is rated as the No. 23 player in the 2018 class by tennisrecruiting.net, considers that option “the best part” about Saddlebrook.

“Academically, it’s helped me a lot,” he said, “because I can travel to tournaments where I would normally not be able to at a regular school, and they’re really flexible here, and I’m allowed to make up my work easily. It’s made for athletes and that’s been like a huge help, because I don’t feel stressed whenever I want to travel to tournaments.”

Schachter earned a career-best ITF (International Tennis Federation) ranking of No. 185 in February, after earning ITF points from wins at several sanctioned tournaments.

“The biggest thing that’s helped me develop as a player is just having a good schedule and being able to have private instruction with the coaches, and also being able to hit with like really good players,” Schachter said.

The daily grind can be demanding.

In the long run, Anderson said, that will serve her well.

“I feel like the structure and everything is definitely a component where your life is set up in a way where you’re taught to practice no matter how you feel, so it’s good and bad, but I mean in the end, after high school, after it’s all done and you’ve graduated, all those days that you put into practice, you’ve grown as a person and feel like a stronger athlete,” she said.

Besides golf, Anderson serves as Saddlebrook Prep’s council president for the Class of 2018.

She appreciates the small, tight-knit environment the program creates.

“Everyone gets really close, so you have a sense that you’re a family in the community,” Anderson said.  “And, that’s helped me a lot as a person because I’ve been able to build really, really close relationships with people from all over the world, and I can go to a lot of different places and know people from there, and have a connection.”

Published December 6, 2017