Playing for a Scholarship

Consider the Long Odds

Goal: Be realistic about where your kid can play college sports.

Ruling the athletic scene is the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, a voluntary group of nearly 1,300 institutions of higher education. Its members fall into three divisions. Division I schools include the largest and most recognizable sports powers, for example, Ohio State, Duke University, the University of Florida, and UCLA. Smaller state universities, as well as lesser-known private schools such as Queens College (N.Y.), Grand Valley State University (Mich.), Truman State University (Mo.), and California State University, Chico, belong to Division II. Only D-I and D-II schools can dispense athletic scholarships. Division III schools, among them Brandeis, Tufts, and Williams, emphasize academics over athletics and cannot under NCAA rules offer athletic scholarships, although in practice they may take an applicant’s sports participation into account when considering a financial aid package. (Ivy League schools play Division I sports but offer no athletic scholarships.)

The NCAA dictates the maximum number of scholarships a school can dispense in any one sport. A school competing in Division I men’s basketball, for instance, can provide no more than 13 full scholarships, while the number of women’s scholarships in D-1 basketball can’t exceed 15. (If schools had no limits, then the wealthiest schools would have an edge on those with less money.) You can trace the gender advantage to Title IX; it requires schools to achieve athletic parity by balancing the number of male and female jocks, and it takes a lot of women to balance out a huge football squad. Snagging athletic money at D-II schools may look easier, but NCAA rules set the number of scholarships that can be given out even lower than in D-I institutions.

The bottom line: only a small percentage of teenage jocks win athletic scholarships. According to the NCAA, only 2 percent of high school athletes, roughly 130,000 kids, bag a full or partial scholarship. An exhaustive New York Times analysis of athletic scholarships in 2008 determined that more than 1 million boys played football in high school, but only 28,299 received a scholarship in Division I or II. Girls faced adverse odds too. More than 600,000 competed in track and field (the most popular girls’ sport), but fewer than 10,000 won a scholarship that was worth an average of $8,100 a year. The average amount awarded for all sports was $10,400, but students could receive far, far less. That’s only about half the $21,400 an out-of-state student would have to pay at the University of Florida.

Some sports offer better chances for cash. Athletes with the best chance of snagging a scholarship, for example, are women rowers. According to the Times’ analysis, 2,359 high school girls rowed and 2,295 captured a rowing scholarship. Average amount: $9,723. For a chart that breaks down the number of high school participants versus sports scholarships here.

Widen Your Search

Goal: Find the right athletic fit.

Scott Brayton, an independent college counselor in Bellevue, Wash., who has worked with more than 600 athletes, advises parents to answer these three questions honestly before aiming their kid at a D-I or top D-II school. Is your teenager the best player on the team? Is he or she the best in his or her league or in a tournament? Is he or she one of the five best players in his or her position in his or her state and region?

If you can’t answer yes to each question, your child still has a shot at playing collegiate sports, but not in front of a Pac-10 or Big 12 Conference audience. Athletes who aren’t as skilled have plenty of opportunities to receive significant financial aid packages but the awards won’t be called “athletic scholarships.” Another option: Division III schools. They pride themselves on placing a greater emphasis on academics. There are 429 active schools in this division, which makes it the largest collection of NCAA institutions. While these schools, many of which are private liberal arts colleges, are prohibited by the NCAA from giving scholarships strictly for athletics, they routinely award financial aid and often merit money for good students who just happen to have athletic talent. Division III schools include Johns Hopkins University, Swarthmore College, California Institute of Technology, and Carleton College.

Start Early

Goal: Make sure that your child meets eligibility standards.

Kids cannot qualify to play in college under NCAA rules unless they comply with eligibility rules. That means taking 14 core courses in high school starting in the ninth grade. They include four years of English, four of math, and so on — generally the courses he or she would have to take to enter most colleges. In eleventh grade, a student should register with the NCAA Eligibility Center. In their senior year, kids must take either the SAT or ACT, have files sent directly to the eligibility center, and also file a statement saying that they are amateurs.

Create a Marketing Plan for Your Kid

Goal: Attract the attention of coaches.

“In this age of YouTube, you can be in the back woods of Alaska and coaches can find you,” observes David Ridpath, an assistant professor of sports administration at Ohio University. These are the kids like LeBron James (if anyone is like the basketball superstar) who attract media attention even in high school. But if your child’s athletic accomplishments haven’t been noticed by coaches, he or she will have to create his or her own buzz.

Athletes often assume they will be discovered at tournaments or college showcases, but most students will have to reach out to coaches. Girls, who are aiming for a high-level Division I or II program, can typically approach coaches as sophomores, while boys should wait until junior year. Boys, unlike girls, are often still growing in the later high school years. NCAA rules don’t allow coaches to contact student athletes by e-mail until their junior year, and they can’t make phone calls until the summer leading into students’ senior year. There is no prohibition, however, about students reaching out to coaches at any time.

Teenagers should consider creating their own Web site to tout their athletic abilities. On the site, a student athlete could include a sports bio, coach recommendations, upcoming tournament appearances, and video clips of his or her performance. It’s easier for a coach to click on a teenager’s Web site than fish through stacks of DVDs piled on his or her desk. Students can e-mail coaches to let them know about their site and follow up with phone calls and snail mail.

Plan B: If your child is supremely gifted, it’s likely that coaches will find him or her, but most athletes are going to have to market themselves.

Focus on Paying for College

Goal: Weigh athletic scholarship prospects versus other financial assistance.

Remember that your major aim here is to get money for college, not to turn your water baby into Michael Phelps — although that would be great if it happened. Athletic scholarships typically are not as generous as regular financial aid or merit awards that you teenager might be able to pick up from other schools. Only four sports — football, men’s and women’s basketball, and women’s volleyball — guarantee full-ride scholarships. In those four, a student either gets a full scholarship or none at all. Jocks in all the other sports, if they receive anything, will probably get a partial scholarship. The coaches in these programs essentially have a checkbook with a finite amount of cash, and they decide how to stretch the money as wisely as possible. Sometimes that means an athlete might only get an eighth of a full-ride scholarship or less.

So, while you’re pursuing athletic money, you should also be looking for schools that might provide your teenager with academic awards or need-based aid that has nothing to do with whether he can hit a golf ball or break a breaststroke record.

Don’t Give Up

Goal: Get a walk-on spot.

Even if athletes strike out during the recruiting season, they still have a chance to play their sport in college — and eventually grab a scholarship. Many coaches, including those in Division I, welcome walk-on athletes.

The reception is particularly warm for women athletes. “I will tell if you are a young lady the chances are very strong at every level to walk on,” says David Ridpath, a former assistant athletic director at a Division I university and an assistant professor of sport administration at Ohio University. Joanie Milhous, the head field hockey coach at Villanova University, agrees: “Most definitely a walk-on athlete can eventually receive an athletic scholarship. If they prove that they are worthy of one and have produced significantly on the field, the coach can choose to give that student-athlete athletic aid.”

Final tip: After being accepted by a school, the student should contact the coach and ask to be invited to his or her preseason camp.