<p>Reading these posts, D3 just keeps sounding better and better.</p>
<p>^^^Agree-reducing scholarship due to performance? For a kid who is practicing? That sounds like … to me. It’s just another way some of these less than honest coaches take advantage of these hard working kids.</p>
<p>My S gets no scholarship for his sport, just need-based. He can’t work a campus job and play, so he loses about $70 a week to play his sport.</p>
<p>On the other hand, his father and I believe he would likely NOT have been accepted at Midd without his sport-nothing wrong with him, but as a not poor smart white boy from a public school in NY “just not special enough”.</p>
<p>So the additional cost of his Midd education-extra coaching in HS:less than $1000;training trip about $1000; no campus job: about $3000-total $4250 per year.</p>
<p>Access to Midd education=PRICELESS.(In our eyes)</p>
<p>He can always quit if he gets tired of competing or working out or the coach or his teammates. And then we’ll make him get a job.</p>
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<p>I believe there is another element to the picture that tends to be a stabilizing force … recruiting. If a school develops a pattern of pulling or reducing scholarships the schools that recruit against this school have a pretty big hammer to use against the school messing with scholarships … so fortunately market forces tend to push schools towards being generous.</p>
<p>I think there’s a difference between an athlete who’s injured and continues to receive his/her athletic scholarship (I believe NCAA has something like a medical exemption) and an athlete who’s out of shape or unmotivated, maybe burned out, or for whatever reason does not perform as expected.</p>
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A lot also depends on the level of the athlete and the schools in which the student athlete is interested. Way back when I picked a school my sport did come into play and my final two choices were … </p>
<p>1) I was marginally recruited to run track at an IVY (letters and phone calls and encourgement to tryout if I was accepted) … if things had gone well I could have been a solid varisty contributor by the time I was a junior/senior.</p>
<p>2) A D3 school not pushing athletics much … for this school as a senior in high school my times would have been the second best among the distance runners on this college team.</p>
<p>Besides the differences in the temperature of the programs D1 and DIII typically provide very different competative platforms.</p>
<p>I agree with 3togo post #63. I think recruiting would suffer if a coach began to reduce/pull scholarships based on performance. Kids and parents talk. I could be naive but I don’t think it happens very often. Maybe in the biggest programs of the largest sports…</p>
<p>That said, I used to think it would be wrong to lower or pull money based on performance, but now I am not so sure. Coach’s job is to move the team forward and if an athlete is not doing his or her part, what should coach do? S/he is being evaluated by ADs and boosters and everyone else and has to pay the bills just us. I don’t know what the answer is.</p>
<p>My kid was offered athletic and academic money at the school he will attend. He could only accept one and went with the athletic money. He reasoned he knew the coach, the team and the expectations. New professors every semester sounded much more daunting. We know students who have lost academic money after one bad semester. Don’t know an athlete who has lost money after a bad season. Not saying it doesn’t happen–just don’t know any.</p>
<p>I just think it sounds so unethical.So you know the coach, but coaches change. </p>
<p>Another interesting point -changing the subject a bit-is the amount of award. Most non-athletes think “athletic scholarship=full ride”. This of course is VERY RARE. I’ll try to find the link, but I read an article where the average baseball scholarship is about $2500. I also remember seeing that girl’s bowling, of all things, had one of the highest awards per student .</p>
<p>Award amounts vary by sport, school, talent etc. You’ve really got to look into the programs you are thinking about. For instance, my daughter got offers from 2000 to 6000 athletically, but a D-1 coach asked what she was getting academically which was half tuition and he offered to cover the rest. An added bonus was that the same school offered her 3k for housing! That was the only time I saw that and that was from 34 schools between D & S.</p>
<p>Geesh I was already a nervous mom about the injury possibilities with D2 who will be a high school freshman this fall and probably soccer rather than xctry and this thread was certainly NOT reassuring. She’s just finishing 8th grade so hopefully will ‘bulk up’ somewhat–a very finesse player who’s rather slender and lightweight…</p>
<p>Very educational to read what’s up here with the college sports.</p>
<p>Whether or not a coach reduces/increases scholarship is a function of athletic performance and supply/demand just as it is in the real world. If both parties know this in advance, I do not see anything wrong with it. I know several national baseball programs that recruit top players that receive any or little scholarship money. These same players could have gotten 50-75% elsewhere. These recruits will do anything to play for these programs and coaches. They can wait their turn to get a shot at playing time for years to be on TV and have a shot at the College World Series. These programs are in a cut throat situation, and their job is to put the best players on the field. Now, there are exceptions. I’ve heard of coaching telling recruits that their scholarship level is going to remain the same over the 4 years, and it doesnt. That is blatant lying, and is dishonest.</p>
<p>Collegemaw one in five girls playing soccer in HS/College needs an ACL repair by age 19. Seriously. XC is much safer, believe it or not. It isn’t the running, it’s the checks and sudden stops and starts. And no concussions in XC, unless you run into a tree branch…</p>
<p>Of course, cheerleading has the highest injury level of ALL HS sports-largest number of fatalities and c-spine injuries. DON’T EVER let your daughter be a “flyer”. </p>
<p>From an injury standpoint for girls: cheerleading, soccer, volleyball and then the others.
For boys football, hockey, basketball. Don’t know why LAX isn’t up there-maybe the numbers playing aren’t as high?</p>
<p>Fenway- I just had no idea that amount of athletic scholarship was based on annual, not initial performance. Doesn’t get discussed much on the boards-My issue with it is the subjective quality. And of course, is it always up front? Doesn’t seem so…</p>
<p>I can actually see both sides: The coach has a limited number of scholarships, so if a ‘non-performing’ athlete takes up a certain chunk of money, this will not be available for team mates, who may actually be higher performing. This may cause some disharmony, especially in a time-based sport where performances are directly comparable. At the same time, as long as the athlete shows up and doesn’t do anything wrong (drinking, whatever), the coach can’t get rid of the athlete. On the other hand, the athlete is stuck, too, because potentially a fair amount of money is at stake, so s/he can’t just quit the team, either.</p>
<p>“Collegemaw one in five girls playing soccer in HS/College needs an ACL repair by age 19. Seriously. XC is much safer, believe it or not. It isn’t the running, it’s the checks and sudden stops and starts. And no concussions in XC, unless you run into a tree branch…”</p>
<p>The challenge with distance running is in repetitive use injuries which unfortunately are very common. Most XC runners are also running indoor and outdoor track, so they’re the only athletes I’m aware of who are actually competing all 3 seasons each year - that can be pretty grueling. The number of college distance runners who haven’t experienced an injury that took them out of competition at some point is pretty small :(</p>
<p>Not making a comparison with other sports - I agree completely about the injury risks involved in college soccer as well, particularly for girls.</p>
<p>Out of competition, yes. To the OR, or at long term risk for cognitive dysfunction due to head injury-no(that’s the doc talkin’)</p>
<p>In agreement, OldBatsie - I’d much rather my kid have a risk of a repetitive use injury with running (we’ve had 3 stress fractures in past year in our family) than a head injury any day! They heal up from stress fractures or soft-tissue injuries without the long-term damage that athletes can incur from other types of injuries.</p>
<p>I might add that “lack of performance” doesn’t necessarily mean lack of effort by the student athlete, although I’m sure sometimes that is the case. It may just mean that the athlete is not making the transition to college level competition in the way the coaches expect. For example, D competes in track in the SEC conference. A performance that might have earned you a state championship in high school, could be sub par at that college level. </p>
<p>I think that students, parents, and coaches need to be realistic about the level at which the athlete can be expected to perform. I know that D would have had more success early on at a lower level of competition. She wanted the big stage, but it came at a price in terms of her confidence in the beginning.</p>
<p>I know three female soccer players that all committed to a lesser IVY for next year. Two of them don’t play on playing /wish they could get out of it already/ say they may give it one year. They only committed to get into the school. I went to the camp in the summer and most of the kids just wanted to get into the school but not really ever play. The team is mostly underclassman …the coach said it was due to coaching change about 4 years earlier and that everyone quit when coaching change took place. Seems crazy but I guess at IVY they are not giving you money anyway/just a spot in admissions.</p>
<p>This is a bitter sweet post for me. In a few hours I am flying 1200 miles to see D play her last home games. She was the only FY player when she went, the only Senior playing this year.</p>
<p>Just after the first year she became very ill, and almost three years later has not yet recovered full lung function (up to 75%!). Sophomore year and this year she is DH, and occasionally OF. Last year she went abroad. D3 was her spot. She had also been recruited for another sport, but I am sure after her illness she could never have done that competitively again. I will cry, she will cry.</p>
<p>Next week her team will play in the conference tournament, highly likley her last games ever. I will cry, she will cry.</p>
<p>3 weeks after that H and I will go down for installation into PBK and graduation. We will all cry.</p>
<p>^Maybe this is a weird question to ask…but why do people capitalize the word Ivy? I’ve seen it done a few times on these boards, but I think it’s kind of bizarre.</p>
<p>gloworm–hugs and Kleenex for you 
Your D sounds amazing…and the only Senior playing…I hope she continues to FULL health, enjoy her graduation!</p>
<p>Injuries…D2 is pretty insistent on starting HS with soccer (she’s done club for several years) and track (altho that’s not going so well right now in 8th grade after a stellar 7th grade season). I am scared to death about the soccer injuries. However, we did talk about being open to XC (did well in midd school) and other sports.</p>
<p>Anyway, not to hijack the thread Thanks (?!) for the injury info…</p>
<p>reading the thread I agree that D3 sounds better and better…</p>