<p>I'm following Carleton's DIII ultimate frisbee teams via twitter. The men's team is playing in the championship at 2 against the winner of Rice-Puget Sound. I'm curious why a DI school such as Rice is able to play at the DIII level.</p>
<p>I know Carleton's A team plays DI, and playing up makes sense. But allowing larger schools to play down doesn't seem right. Anyone know what the rule is? I thought this might be of interest to parents of athletes when considering schools.</p>
<p>My understanding is that club sports are not governed by the DI, II, III distinctions. My daughter played club ice hockey for Chicago, a DIII school. Their opponents included UIUC, Northwestern and other schools that, for varsity sports, would not be in their division. Until Ultimate is a sanctioned varsity sport by the NCAA, the schools will continue to mix at the championship level.</p>
<p>Bingo. NCAA only governs varsity sports. It does not govern club sports such as ultimate frisbee. </p>
<p>I remember being at an Eastern Illinois football game a few years ago when they announced that the women’s rugby team had beaten a Big 12 school by like 60 points. Everybody was so excited… what most didn’t understand is that at EIU rugby is considered an NCAA Varsity sport (and has the budget to match) while that Big 12 school had rugby as a club sport (and limited budget to match).</p>
<p>Per my D, Club Sports are for those who don’t want to commit to playing Varsity sports, or just aren’t quite good enough to play Varsity in college, but want a better level of competition than IM sports. </p>
<p>Her team played games in germany and ireland, and it made it easy for her to fit in for study abroad, as she had met the team the previous year while in Germany.</p>
<p>I guess I’m wondering at what point a DI school would have play at the DIII level. For instance, if Rice’s ultimate team were to start winning every tournament at DIII, at one point would someone say, Ya know, you technically are a DI school and we’re not going to let you play DIII anymore? There is no NCAA oversight.</p>
<p>I don’t think that would happen. A lot of the rules are also about funding and scholarships. If a D3 school wins out every year, they aren’t going to force them to become D1 as long as they actually fit within the requirements to be a D3 school. A big difference with club teams is that that they have much less school support and funding.</p>
<p>Also, all sports are not necessarily the same level at a school anyway. For example, at MIT every sport is D3 except for rowing, which is D1 (but still has no scholarships).</p>
<p>That’s what you’re not getting. In club sports, there are NO divisions such as DI/DII/DIII. Certain leagues may have classifications but they won’t necessarily match up to what the varsity sports are in the NCAA.</p>
<p>Yes, every school has club sports and how good those sports are has nothing to do with whether the other sports are D1, D2, etc. I grew up near a D1 school with some very successful teams. Men’s rowing was a club sport and they didn’t even have a boathouse. They were literally storing their boats in somebody’s backyard. Their “coach” was a senior who had been a member of the team before he decided to fill the vacated coach spot. The women’s rowing team had a beautiful boathouse and several coaches because the school classified that as a varsity Division 1 sport and was willing to put money into it.</p>
<p>Another distinction is that since club sports aren’t funded beyond what any school club is, they don’t affect the count for title 9 like varsity sports do.</p>
<p>On Carleton’s club women’s rugby team’s website it says they are 2011 D3 champions. Clearly there are divisions. Whether they are the same divisions as NCAA divisions idk, but evidenced by Carleton there are clearly some sort of separation based on school size.</p>
<p>Club Sports do have divisions depending on which sport it is and how the governing body wants to regulate it. For example, they may wish to divide 24 club teams in their region into 8 teams in Div 1, 8 teams in Div 2, and 8 teams in Div 3. </p>
<p>My son plays on a Div 2 club team at a Div 3 school. The best club teams participate in state playoffs, regional playoffs, and even National Playoffs in all three divisions. His arch rivals were eliminated in the National Quarterfinals, and they are considered a Div 1 school in some varsity sports and a Div 2 school in other varsity sports.</p>
<p>A few years ago his club team elected to move up to a higher level of competition rather than consistently defeat weaker club teams. The women’s club team also elected to move up to Div 1 in recent years to play against competitive opponents.</p>
<p>Wikipedia (take with a grain of salt) says that Ultimate does not have divisions. It lists Carelton’s mens club team as being the 2011 champs (not women’s). It shows UC Santa Barbara as the women’s champ.</p>
<p>Edit- I should also add that when both my kid and I played club sports in college, there were no divisions. Like another poster said however, each sport is governed by its own body, maybe some have gone that route.</p>
<p>My son is on the sailing team which is only club at his school but they compete against schools whose sailing teams are D3 (maybe even D2 and D1.) I suppose they could win the championship if they were good enough, even though they are club.</p>
<p>D-1 is the top rung for UF clubs. I believe you get to select what division you want to compete in. D-1 is mostly large schols but Carleton is right in there. D-3 is for smaller schools but you can move up if you wish. Carleton also has a teamplaying in D-3. They formed because the first team was too cutthroat/serious.</p>
<p>YDS - The Ultimate rules are that if you have 7500 or fewer students, you can choose to play DIII or DI. If you have more students than that, you can only play DI. I don’t know about other sports.</p>
<p>That makes sense. Why didn’t I just ask you, alice? Congrats again on the big win!!!</p>
<p>For those who don’t know, Carleton men’s B team, GOP, won the DIII natl championship today. The A team, CUT, chooses to play up and competes next weekend for the DI championship. It’s the reigning DI champion, beating Wisconsin-Madison last year. That’s what got me thinking. Could a Wisconsin play at the DIII level if it wanted, like Rice? That didn’t make sense. Because it’s got 40,000 students (or however many) from which to field a team, compared to schools of 2,000 such as a Carleton.</p>
Congrats again on the big win!!!</p>