What do students and families do when a college cuts sports at the 11th hour? This is a Div. 1 school. The school notified the coaches last week that they were cutting men’s soccer, baseball, and swimming, and women’s rowing.
Can the kids who currently attend the college with athletic scholarships get awards from other schools? Can athletes even transfer to other teams?
What can kids who turned down other programs last fall do? Are they allowed to contact the other coaches and see if they have space on their teams? Can athletes take a gap year and request to be considered for the next cycle? If they can take a gap year, can they participate in other sports programs during that time or would that make them ineligible for college teams?
Any input would be appreciated.
You are most likely referring to SUNY Buffalo, which recently announced that it was cutting men’s soccer, men’s swimming and diving, baseball and women’s rowing. It appears that the affected students have options:
http://buffalonews.com/2017/04/03/ub-will-drop-four-sports-teams-athletics-budget-cutback/
Note that none of the affected sports are “head-count” sports. In “head-count” sports (like football and men’s or women’s basketball), athletes get “full” scholarships, which cover all costs of tuition, room & board, and books.
It’s unlikely that any of the 120 affected students had that deal, because they were playing “equivalency” sports. In “equivalency” sports, a coach gets only a limited amount of scholarship money, which is typically shared by the team in the form of partial scholarships. The four affected sports in this case are limited to a total maximum of 51.5 scholarships, which would have been divided among the 120 participating students, depending on need and ability, as per the coach’s discretion. Assuming max funding divided equally, then each student would be getting about a 42% partial scholarship. In reality, it’s unlikely that UB had the funding for maximum scholarships in these sports, so the actual partial scholarship level for the affected students is probably lower than that.
In any event, UB says that the affected students can keep their partial scholarships if they choose to stay.
Thank you, @Corbett. It is UB. Do you know what happens with the athletes who gave up spots on other rosters last fall? Do they still have any chance of pursuing their sport in college? If so, how would they go about it?
If they want to continue playing sports at other schools, then they should contact the coaches at those other schools for advice on how to proceed.
The affected students should have four years of eligibility to play NCAA sports. You can split that up between different schools; e.g. use two years at one school, then transfer and use the remaining two years at another school. Sometimes there are conference or NCAA restrictions on transfer students, but I doubt that they would apply to a student who is transferring due to factors totally beyond his control (like a school unexpectedly shutting down an athletic program). Ask a coach.
An issue here would be whether it is too late for a new school to accept a transfer athlete for the 2017-2018 academic year. Ask the coach at the potential new school. Maybe a coach has enough pull to make this happen for a sufficiently talented athlete – or maybe not.
If it is too late to transfer, then an affected student should be able to stay at UB for another year without playing, while going through the normal transfer process. In this case, he wouldn’t use up any athletic eligibility (in effect, he would be “red-shirting”). Then he could play out the rest of his NCAA eligibility after transferring, while staying in school as a fifth-year undergraduate, or as a grad student. But best to check with a coach.
Thank you, @ Corbett. I’ll pass that on to the rest of our team.
The student athletes will be allowed to transfer without penalty (waiting a year, getting permission to contact other coaches, playing in the same conference). Some incoming freshmen may have signed an National Letter of Intent in the fall, and they will be released from those too if they’d rather go to another school. There are probably some students who were planning to sign the NLI next week, and they won’t be able to sign and will have no scholarships. Although the school says they will honor scholarships of current athletes, that will probably only be for one more year, and there will be no increases. Many athletes start with a smaller amount and hope it will increase as they continue to compete. I don’t think the scholarships are the reason UB is cancelling these sports but the expense of running the teams, the travel costs, the facilities, the cost of hosting games.
Baseball has different rules for scholarships. Although it isn’t a headcount sport, there are minimums the scholarship players must receive and a limit on roster size. Women’s rowing is also different in that there are 18 (20?) scholarships available so on a fully funded team, most athletes are getting a near full ride.
This happened to a friend of our a few years ago. He signed his NLI in November and was all ready to go, hadn’t even applied to other schools because he knew he was headed to Dominican (CA). Because of a discipline issue, they dropped lax in MAY. His parents had really wanted him in a catholic, Div 2 school. They scrambled and found another school and it’s worked out well., but his options were very limited while looking in May and he was a very good player coming off a state championship team. I have no idea if the scholarship was similar or even if there was any scholarship money available. I have a feeling he was full pay at least for his first year.
U of North Dakota just dropped swimming/diving and women’s hockey. We know a swimmer on the team and I don’t know if he’ll stay for his senior year or transfer. He did not go to UND for the weather, he went to swim. Women’s hockey is another sport where there are 18 scholarships (if fully funded) which are split among 20-25 skaters, so again almost a full ride for most.
If you are asking if other coaches who had been recruiting these athletes will welcome them, it’s really up to the coaches and whether they’ve given out all the scholarship money. As I said, baseball has a limit on roster size, so can’t just squeeze in one more. It’s certainly worth recontacting the coaches (it’s always advised not to burn bridges when you end recruitment), but the athletic money may not be there, the merit money may not be there, the students may have not even applied to the school. The coach can probably get the student accepted, but FA and other benefits may be gone.
It’s hard.
NCAA rules are complicated, and in addition there may be conference rules, so discuss the situation with a professional Division I coach – don’t rely on advice from anonymous Internet message boards. However, it’s likely that the rules will cut some slack to student-athletes who are affected by situations totally beyond their control – just as UB is cutting some slack to the affected students by offering to extend their athletic scholarships.
It would have been better if UB had announced that the sports would be cut after the end of the 2017-18 school year. That would have given the athletes more time to arrange for transfers.