The Dock
Persona Non Grata
Yeah. There was a kid I went to college with, a Thai national, who attended school at IMG with the idea he could network with Americans and play competitive tennis. IMG, as in the school and its mastodon athletics program, is made possible by the paying customers -- many of whom are in those sports you did not highlight.How many families do you think will pay 75K a year? IMG offers 8 sports (Tennis, Football, Soccer, Baseball, Basketball, Golf, Lacrosse and Track. I've highlighted the two sports that would stand any type of chance for this type of thing to work in Ohio. It just so happens that football and basketball were the last two sports that IMG began offering...once they had a ton of money coming in from the other sports. It's just not feasible which is part of the reason these programs fail everywhere else. They promise to be the next IMG when in reality it's just a scam that hurts the kids.
I understand where ghsknightsfan is coming from, but I really don't see an IMG model working in Ohio. For all the reasons that you mentioned, and also the fact if there isn't already a school that operates on a model most-similar to what IMG is then I don't see how they could easily come into that structure without possibly going under. And I'm not too sure where all such a school in Ohio could pull from? Indiana has La Lumiere, PA has a crap-ton of boarding schools, as does New Jersey. The DC Metro has the mega competitive Catholic leagues.
The only school in Ohio that I could possibly see going into a mold similar to IMG would be Harvest Preparatory School in Canal Winchester, but that again really does come down to dollars-and-cents.