Dec. 2, 2008
Part One (Sept. 2008): Free Fall? | Peer Review
Part Two (Oct. 2008): Passport to Campus |
Peer
Review
Part Three (Nov. 2008): Too Vested in Verbals?
| Peer
Review
Part Four (Dec. 2008): Piece of the Pie | Peer Review
Recruiting is a topic on which families, prospects, coaches
and others expend considerable resources, time and emotion.
Lacrosse Magazine will delve into many of the sub-topics involved
in a series of articles, augmented by personal stories from young
men and women that have recently completed or are in the midst of
the recruiting process.
Part Four of the series examines scholarships. This article
appears in the December issue of LM, a US Lacrosse publication
available exclusively to its members. Join today to
start your monthly subscription.
by Nathan Maciborski, Special to Lacrosse Magazine
Online
Dom Starsia just chuckles.
Whenever the Virginia men's lacrosse coach overhears two kids
talking about "so-and-so got a full ride to Georgetown" or
"Carolina gave him a full scholarship," he figures they're probably
off base.
Unlike football and basketball -- where nearly every Division I
player gets a full scholarship -- lacrosse players very rarely see
their tuition, room, board and fees covered for an entire four
years.
The "full ride" is one of many myths that student-athletes and
their parents may encounter when navigating the NCAA athletic
scholarship maze during the recruiting process. Time to shed some
light on that and several other commonly held misconceptions.
Myth 1: Scholarships Will Find
You
Organization and communication are the cornerstones of the
recruiting process. It is important for young athletes to organize
first -- put their goals on paper and then build a checklist of
things that need to be done, which includes picking up the phone
and calling college coaches. E-mail coaches with your personal
profiles. It is important to take a proactive approach.
"I think the one thing that folks don't realize is that they have
a tremendous laterality, as far as initiating communication with
the college coaches, which essentially gets them on the radar
screen," said Tom Kovic, the founder of Victory Collegiate
Consulting. "I think that there is a little too much caution that
athletes and families take when it comes to getting on the radar as
far as athletic scholarships. I think they're afraid that they're
going to come off appearing cocky, and that is not the case at
all."
Coaches do their best to scour the country in search of recruits,
but they can only be in one place at a time. If you believe that
you have something to offer a program, it can't hurt to reach out
to that school.
Myth 2: The Well Runs
Deep
Under the NCAA, including Divisions I, II and III, only 30 percent
of student-athletes are on any form of athletic scholarship.
Division III doesn't offer any athletic scholarships, nor do any
Ivy League schools. And the majority of the D-I and D-II teams are
not fully funded, meaning they do not have the resources to offer
the maximum amount of scholarships allowed by the NCAA.
A fully-funded Division I men's lacrosse team has a maximum number
of 12.6 scholarships to hand out. On the women's side, the max is
12. That number can essentially be divided up however a coach
chooses, but the max is for the entire program, not per class. Some
schools try to reward upperclassmen for their loyalty to the
program by upping their scholarship going into their senior years,
which may leave less than three scholarships for a coach to go out
and recruit nine or 10 incoming players.
"If you just look at the scholarship offerings, you're probably
talking about the top 150 guys in the country, and there's probably
4,000 kids going in to play college lacrosse at all the levels
every year," said Matt Wheeler, a four-year letterwinner at
Wesleyan University who, along with former teammate Chris Meade,
co-founded lacrosserecruits.com -- a Facebook-style Web site
designed to market high school lacrosse players to college
coaches.
Myth 3: The "Full
Ride"
One of the most common misconceptions is that a scholarship,
whether it is full or partial, lasts four years. By definition, a
scholarship is a one-year renewable grant. Renewals are not
automatic, and the college must notify the student in writing by
July 1 of his or her scholarship status. Therefore, even the
proverbial "full ride" -- a rarity at virtually every program -- is
only guaranteed for one year.
"In my 17 years at Virginia, I think we've done it three times,
where we've given somebody a full scholarship," Starsia said. "What
we're talking about in general are pieces of scholarships. Our goal
every year is that everybody gets something."
If a typical, fully-funded Division I men's lacrosse team has 40
players on its roster, there's a good chance that 35 of those
players receive a percentage of a scholarship -- likely less than
half of one full scholarship. Another two or three may receive
need-based financial aid only, while another two or three are
paying their own way entirely.
Myth 4: Summer is Scholarship
Season
Unlike the recruiting process, which is full of regulations and
stipulations as to when and how a coach can contact an athlete, a
scholarship offer can be made at any point. Just don't expect to
hear one too early.
For a coach that starts out recruiting, say, 20 players, it would
be imprudent to make specific dollar-amount promises in the
beginning of the process. Nobody wants to be in a position where
they have to go back on their word. So it becomes an ongoing
dialogue, where the two parties get down to particulars as the
signing period nears.
"What we tell boys when they're sitting here early in their junior
year is, `You're a scholarship candidate for us,'" said Starsia.
"So if the boy has five or six schools he's going around to visit,
when they come back to us and say, `Hey Coach, I'm getting pretty
close to making a decision,' then we're going to give them the
information (i.e., a dollar amount) they need in order to complete
that picture."
In most cases, the first binding agreement between an athlete and
a program that is offering an athletic scholarship is the National
Letter of Intent signing, which takes place in November or April of
the senior year.
Myth 5: No Scholarship = Full
Price
If a prospect is not offered an athletic scholarship in his or her
freshman year, that doesn't mean he or she is not eligible later.
There also are a number of other options that can be explored
through the college's financial aid department. They include:
need-based financial aid, grants and loans.
