I understand that diving gets one of the 9.9 swimming scholarships and that number ultimately depends on the school (meaning there may be less then 9.9).
My question is: does that mean only one total per year or one total per team at a time? For example, Sam is a junior Olympic champion and he gets the full scholarship his freshman year; does that mean there are no more for that team as long as Sam remains on the team and keeps the full ride…or is it one new scholarship each year…so Sam, now a sophomore, keeps his full ride and there is now a new scholarship for an incoming freshman (which can be either a full or divided up)?
There is a total number of scholarships for the team, no matter what year the students are in. Say a team has 10 scholarships. The coach can designate them 2.5 for each year, or all for freshmen, or all for seniors (some teams like football have a limit on the number of freshmen that can be brought in per year). Most likely, each team member gets a small sliver of the whole. Scholarships, except in the PAC 12 and B1G 10, are for one year and renewable at the coach’s choice.
In your example, if Sam has one entire scholarship and the coach lets him keep it year after year, that is one less for everyone else to split. Swimming and diving scholarships are diced thin. Coaches like students to get academic merit too, so that leaves more money for the team to split. If Sam received a 50% merit scholarship, he would only need a 50% diving scholarship.
That seemed like the way we were reading it, but boy, that isn’t very much support is it! I get swimming and diving isn’t a revenue sport like football and basketball, but it is just as much training and sweat!
My son would love to attend a certain school, but “Sam”, who is 2 years older, has committed there with a full four year full ride. Don’t get me wrong, he is that good, but this school doesn’t offer merit to out of state applicants. Bummer
Before you reject this school, you might check to see if Sam is leaving to train for the Olympics. I know Missy Franklin is done at Cal after this season to train and travel to meets. Her scholarship will be freed for others.
I don’t know the particulars for swimming, but track is the same way, scholarships are typically divided up to support a whole team. Based on what we have experienced, don’t rule anything out.
Unless you personally know “Sam” will not leave the school under any circumstance, keep up correspondence with the coach. Kids leave school, transfer, etc. for a variety of reasons. Also, unless you know for certain, “Sam” may not really be on a full scholarship. People like to brag/exaggerate about what they get and for the non-revenue sports there is a lot less money to go around than people realize, so the assumption is that a good athlete must have a full ride, when that is seldom the case.
We also had one school offer my son in-state tuition as a scholarship, as part of a neighboring state program (although our state is on the other side of the country). So ask the coach if he can get creative on merit aid. It never hurts to ask.
^^The bragging is very common. My daughter has a teammate who was at the rival high school. I heard her father going on and on about her having a ‘full ride’, implying it was all athletic, but I know it isn’t. I’m sure she got school merit, a state grant, and another state award, because my daughter did too. She may also have received some FA. Her family may not be paying anything OOP, but it is definitely not a full ride athletic scholarship. If the team were fully funded, and the coach told us it isn’t, there would only be 9.9 scholarships to split among 20 players; no one has a full scholarship. No one.
Any opinions on the best way to get noticed by coaches…such as the website Divers to College, school questionnaires, emailing coaches directly and sending video, attending summer camps…seems like there are trends that come and go. Any current advice?
My son also plays football and this year’s advice is to email coaches and also hand them a CD at a camp or combine.
When reading the recruiting rules, black out dates, no contact dates, etc, we are very confused on just how the kids and coaches talk to one another. Unless I’m reading it wrong, the windows are very short for contact and even then, it’s late in senior year. :-??
