In this article, Kirsten Hextrum considers institutional avenues that limit upward mobility opportunities by revealing a hidden curriculum of athletic recruiting that favors students from privileged backgrounds. The study's data center on forty-seven life history interviews with National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletes from an athletically and academically prestigious university. Hextrum's findings reveal three phases of a hidden curriculum--socialization, covert selection, and overt selection--that secure greater access to elite colleges for White middle-class communities via athletic participation. In this case, social reproduction required active effort by both representatives of higher education and representatives of White middleclass communities to protect existing class and race relations.