Saturday, October 31, 2009
North Cross RB to play for Harvard
The Roanoke Times I File 2008
North Cross running back Tyler Caveness chose Harvard over Princeton.
Congratulations were in order for North Cross running back Tyler Caveness on Friday and not just because he rushed for 327 yards and three touchdowns.
Caveness received a call from the admissions department at Harvard that prompted him to go public with an oral commitment to play football for the Crimson.
Caveness had taken a recruiting visit to Harvard over the previous weekend and seen the Crimson defeat Princeton 37-3.
He said his final choice came down to Harvard and Princeton, which had notified him in May that it was saving a roster spot for him.
"I committed to Harvard last Sunday," Caveness said, "but I wanted to wait until I talked to admissions. I was told, if I keep my grades up, I will be accepted in the spring."
Although schools in the Ivy League do not give athletic scholarships, they compete on the Division I-AA level and take recruiting seriously.
Caveness rushed for 2,185 yards and scored 26 touchdowns as a junior, when he helped lead North Cross to an independent schools state championship. Listed at 5 foot 9 and 176 pounds, he has been timed in the 4.4-second range for 40 yards.
His 327-yard outing in a 45-7 victory over the Covenant School gave him 1,512 yards after nine games this year. His career high of 345 yards was against Hargrave Military Academy last year.
Caveness began his career at Cave Spring High School before transferring to North Cross in January 2008. He had shared time for the Knights and wasn't sure that he was a college prospect.
He said the move to North Cross made him pay greater attention to his athletics and turned him into an Ivy League prospect. He said he has a 3.7 grade-point average and 1,300 on the Scholastic Assessment Test.
He hopes to become a doctor and based his choice of Harvard on its pre-med acceptance rate and "the fact that over the last 16 years, all of their graduating seniors have won an Ivy League championship," he said.
Since 2000, Harvard has posted the second-highest winning percentage in Division I-AA.
