Div 3 Athletic recruits

Any Canadians have kids playing Div 3 sports? Our kid has been accepted at a great school in the USA. She loves the coach and the athletic program but the Exchange rate on the Canadian dollar makes the family contribution a real stretch for us. Do athletic recruits really have time to work on campus with practice schedules and school work? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I think it wold depend on the sport, the college, and the kid. Some kids have energy for days, and some kids just don’t have the same stamina. Football requires lifts, practices, film review, study halls, etc, whereas diving might just include 1.5 hour practice. Also, some schools have much longer practices than others. Even between schools we found differences in what the time expectations were. I think these are questions to ask the coach.

Thank you!

My daughter played D2. Many of her teammates worked because they had to. My daughter never did until her senior year (and it was during the season, for a professor). I think she kind of regretted not working in prior years because it was pretty easy and she liked the extra money. One friend worked for the same grocery store that she’d been working for since hs, and she also was a referee, mostly at tournaments (weekends, lots of money for 2-3 days of hard work). My daughter was studying engineering and some of the team were business or communications majors which were considered a little easier. I know they aren’t easier for some, but there were fewer credits required to graduate.

You should talk to the coach. He might have some suggestions (like reffing). I don’t know if an international student can do work study jobs.

Definitely check with the coach since it will vary by school and sport. At my son’s D3 school the coaches work around the academic schedule - the mantra is school comes first. However, they discourage the kids from working during the athletic season. “I have to work” is not a valid reason for missing practice.

I agree that the sport aND school will matter. Rowers, who tend to be done with practice before the rest of the campus is awake, may find it easier to work a joB than soccer players, for example. But you also need to be realistic about what the contribution from the job will be. $15/hour (probably on the higher side) at the school bookstore is going to net about $120/week (pretax) for 8 hours a week (probably max). It could help with spending money, but realistically isn’t going to make a huge dent in a large tuition bill. Every bit helps, but check out the parameters before going too far down this hole…

My daughter is a 3 season athlete majoring in engineering at a medium large D1 public university. She would be able to do work study but it would not be easy to schedule. Her social life is primarily hanging out with teammates. She functions on 6-7 hours of sleep generally and has become good at using small chunks of time between classes to get assignments done that could otherwise be wasted on social media. All of her teammates seem to be masters of time management. Her primary practice is at 7:00 AM 6 days per week.

I agree it depends on sport and major. My D3 D plays basketball. In the fall she worked about 4 -6 hours a week at football and soccer games as a ball girl with other girls from her team. It was more a social thing than work. In the fall she was doing strength and conditioning and captains practices. Now that the season is in full swing, she could still probably handle a few hours a week, but we are not pushing her to work. I would not count on WS to help pay for anything other than spending money.

It really does depend on the school and the jobs available. At some schools, all the students work – but then again, there is work and there is work. If you can find a job checking student ids at the library, you can do a lot of studying while you work.

There are a lot of odd places to find jobs at a smaller school and a lot of kids that need to work, so have her be creative about looking in places that clearly won’t overlap with her sport. Some jobs happen early in the morning (coffee shop) and others during the workday (campus office jobs) and others may be after practice (bar or pizza late shifts), so it’s just a matter of finding one that she can tailor to her needs. My D3 athlete DD got a job with her coach doing stuff in the athletic dept, so the boss is acutely aware of the demands of their schedule and the hours ebb and flow around team time and class.

D3 sports aren’t much, if any better than the sports (and in some cases, worse) you will find at the Canadian Uni level
As a Canadian, you can get an excellent education at a Canadian school for a fraction of the cost that you would pay down south at a D3, where athletic scholarships are not in play.

Put another way, why not go to school in Canada at their absurdly low tuition rates and play a sport there? 

Thanks for your thoughts everyone!