there is a myth that has existed for years regarding NCAA Division III colleges and their ability to award athletic scholarships.

there are many people who believe that a high school athlete who "signs" with a DIII school is getting a full ride. this is simply not true. it is true that DIII student-athletes receive some form of merit or need-based financial aid, but they would get that whether or not they played a sport.

I DO NOT INTEND TO DEMEAN OR DEGRADE DIII ATHLETICS. I'M SURE IT'S A GREAT EXPERIENCE FOR MOST OF THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO PARTICIPATE. my point is that there are a lot of high school students (and parents) who do not realize that they will not get a scholarship to play football at north central, for example. and, far too often, kids wind up swimming in student loan debt because they decided to try to keep their athletic career alive for just a year or two.

Or three or four years.

Your post is a good reminder to parents that have a child who wants to go to a DIII to continue their sports "career."

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Yup. So many travel players go there thinking it’s big time. Perpetual disappointment. My son played up an age bracket so the majority of his team went D3. A bunch of crap programs.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Shuffleboard team?

We see this a lot here in Western PA and football. Sometimes kids but many more times parents can't let it go. The D3 schools here imply/provide creative financial aid and other scholarships to term the ride.

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Elections have consequences.

They may not award athletic scholarships per se. But if you're an athlete of some ability + have the requisite academics plenty of DIII schools offer 80%+ scholarships. I kinda thought that was the point of attending a smaller Division III school: ends up being the same price or cheaper than your local in-state uni but greater opportunity to participate in extracurriculars + smaller classes/more individual academic attention.

You can also get those scholarships on academics alone. But, yeah, D-III schools aren't likely to help you out if you're only bringing athletics to the table.

I have had some experience with both soccer and baseball players going to DIII schools and they have mostly been positive. While they do not get athletic scholarships per se they can get academic scholarship money that they would not have gotten if they were not athletes and also no interest loans that are also quite good and helpful. IN other words, athletes that are not recruited and given scholarships from bigger schools, can go and afford to fine DIII schools and play the sport that they love.

And in terms of baseball players, some of these players can and will get drafted by professional teams if they do well on their collegiate teams. This is especially true of late blooming players who perhaps were too small when they played high school ball but grew latently or the type and size of the high school that they were at didn't get scouted. This happens quite a bit, especially for the non "major revenue" sports like baseball.

As a baseball coach both for high school and quality travel teams, I have counseled literally hundreds of kids on how to approach their educational and athletic options and that includes being frank with they and their parents on what the likelihood of playing college ball might be. And some of that advice included the possibility of being able to get to play at a DIII school and better yet getting not just into the school itself(a school for example will lower its entrance requirements for a player as opposed to another student with higher test scores or GPA) but also will find scholarship money for the student in order to get he or she to go to their school.

ITs frankly up to parents and the student him or her self to make an educated assessment of whether they want to play a sport in college and if it is practical for them. Playing a sport in any college takes up time and effort because these scholarships also depend very much on grades being made in order to keep their scholarship.

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An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

There really is no good reason to be a DIII athlete unless you happen to choose a school that is DIII and you want to participate in it like you would a club sport.

That isn't to disrespect the small school experience but if you would otherwise choose a different school but are going to a lower choice because they give you a chance to play a sport in front of crowds smaller than an average high school then you shouldn't.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Played soccer and baseball in college and I couldn't even tell you if we were D3 or NAIA. I don't think anyone was good enough to merit financial assistance, let alone a scholarship.

i have looked at the rosters of many DIII men's basketball and football teams. there are two things that i have frequently noticed - the rosters are enormous (like 30 players on a basketball roster and 120 on a football roster) and the number of freshmen and sophomores on the rosters is much higher than the number of juniors and seniors.

i had a DIII basketball coach tell me that they'll do "whatever it takes to get them (recruits) in the door" in order to boost the college's enrollment numbers, however small that boost might be.

My daughter is a decent runner and realizes that she is not going to be a D1 or D2 caliber athlete, but is a fantastic student and is looking at some D3 schools where she can compete in XC and track. We haven't gotten deep into the process yet but it appears to us that if you are a top student AND have a passion for a certain sport that some of the smaller schools will definitely offer you some great academic scholarships in an effort to get you to attend and continue your sports career. At the state XC meet this fall it was a sight to see all of these officials from different schools approaching middle- and back-of-the-pack kids about continuing with them. She is definitely motivated to keep her grades up so she can go to one of these schools and keep running competitively.

it's been my experience that those same academic scholarships are there (at DIIIs) regardless of whether the student in question chooses to play a sport or not.

best of luck to you and your daughter in whatever you decide. my advice, if it hasn't become apparent yet, is to do LOTS of research about what the financial aid package will be prior to making a choice. AND, if that aid is for 1 year or more.

That was my experience. Ultimately, I decided that while it would have been fun to continue the sport, I wasn't going to be a professional and I should move on and focus on what my career goals were at a school more suited to my academic interests.

Put away my childish things as it were.

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You know me like that.

Yes Doc. I was particularly concerned about extended bus trips causing loss of study and exam time. Not for myself but relatives.

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Elections have consequences.

I also turned down Coach K.

You're welcome, Christian Laettner.

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You know me like that.

The documentary "I Hate Dr Ken" is still begging to be made

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Another benefit is that sports might get you into a lower division school that is academically superior at which you might otherwise have no shot. This includes places with big academic names but small athletic credentials like U of C. I've always admired how Loyola Academy has annually gotten football players into Ivies. I personally knew of 4 from my age group, none of whom were going but for football.

Use them and let them use you.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

very good points

That is true GD. Probably worth playing at Carnegie Mellon.

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Elections have consequences.

Ivy League is different.

Many have large endowments that make up for even more money than the scholarships do. Good friend of mine’s son played for four years at Dartmouth, and it was only $20,000.

Our oldest son had no interest in playing football at Princeton, or Carnegie Mellon when They called

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Long, long time ago, you could get 80% at D2. Can you now?

Did you kick his ass? I woulda gave him one swift kick for each of my genes he carried.

Just kidding. However, I went through this years back when Trump University wanted me to come out there to bowl. Woulda cost me about 8 grand a year. I wanted to continue blowing more than anything, but moving back East just wasn't in the cards.

No.

I never wanted him to play football. My wife signed him up one Saturday when I was working at the Score.

He had an opportunity to be a preferred walk on at Illinois State for basketball. The coach at Proviso East , who he competed against, really liked him and knew the coach well there. But, he didn't even do that.

But he went to ISU for a semester, skipped most of his classes and played hoops all day til he flunked out.

He just started at COD last year after 10 years. And he is only one of our six oldest without a bachelors at least.

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That's an unfortunate typo tommy. I wasn't entirely sure of your intentions and figured it's similar to my phone posting style.

I have a nephew and a niece who played DIII basketball. The boy played enough AAU in high school to know he was a little too small and a little too slow to get a D1 scholarship, and got a good academic package to go DIII and start for three years.

The girl got scholarship offers to a few D1 schools and picked a well known one whose boys program is frequently a 13-14 seed. She played in the rotation one year and then the second year was relegated to the end of the bench due to a coaching staff change. She said fuck that and a DIII school within 90 minutes of her home gave her enough academic scholarship (she was a good A- student) to make it worth her family's while to bring her back.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Damn.

At least you're honest.

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We Now Know That JOE BIDEN has been COMPROMISED by CHINA! (let that sink in)

Election 2020-The Largest Fraud in the History of Mankind.

*If you believe that Biden won, you also believe that Epstein killed himself*

Typo?? That's my style. Not the blowing (or not so much the blowing), but the pretending I'm an illiterate jackass.

Illiterate my ass. Living for blowing was a bit of a surprise. But hey, good for youuu.

St. Xavier is NAIA and have 50 kids on their baseball team. About 30 of them play a 15 game JV season in the Spring.

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That to me is crap. You do disrespect whatever you think is the "small school experience". You also do not anyway understand the joy of playing a sport at a college level. I know quite a bit about DII and DIII athletics. You obviously do not. BY your board name I guess that you went to Purdue University. I played for a small DII level school in baseball and we beat them more than we lost to them back when I played. And the same things apply right now where some good DIII and DII teams do beat DI schools on occasions.

In other words, your an idiot for somehow categorizing DIII athletics as a "club sport". It is far from a club sport. A lot of these schools have good quality athletic programs that good athletes participate in.

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An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip