NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

It’s Monday morning, so naturally, I’m focusing on the negative. Hopefully, that will soon change.

The worst part of my job here at the National Collegiate Scouting Association is having to tell a student-athlete or his or her parents that the NCSA isn’t going to be able to help them get from Point A (where they are now) to Point B (playing a varsity sport in college). Fact of the matter is, because of our positive relationships with college coaches, and their expectations that they have for us, we do have to be selective when choosing what athletes to work with.

And for whatever reason, be it grades too low, not enough playing experience or not showing commitment to playing at the next level, I begrudgingly am forced to turn away some student-athletes on a day-to-day basis.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep trying to play a college sport and try to get a scholarship. And even if those options don’t work out as planned, there still can be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — club sports.

A lot of colleges and universities have established club teams for either sports that aren’t NCAA-sanctioned, sports that aren’t varsity at the college, or less competitive versions of their varsity counterparts. And at a lot of the major Div. I schools, the teams come aplenty. The University of Illinois, for example, has over 100 different club teams, ranging from the standard baseball and hockey to water-skiing and broomball.

There are a couple big differences between varsity and club sports, first of which being funding. As opposed to varsity sports, club sport teams receive little to no money from the college itself, meaning the majority of the sport’s budget comes from fundraising and membership dues.

The second big difference is that most of these organization were created and are primarily ran by the students themselves. The clubs often will have presidents, vice-presidents, secretaries, treasurers and various committees, making sure that the organization runs as seamlessly as possible.

With this comes one of the best aspects of participating in club sports: responsibility. Because the bulk of these teams are managed by students, they give you the opportunity to play a pivotal role in your team’s functioning, be it organizing social events, managing the team’s money, setting up a fund-raiser or being in charge of operations. In the end, will give you a great since of pride, satisfaction and accomplishment.

So even if you’re not recruited to play a sport, that doesn’t mean your playing days have to end. If anything, you might get more out of a club sport than you would with a varsity sport.

Man, my Monday is feeling better already.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 9:36 am and is filed under Athletic Scholarships, College Hockey, NCAA, Parents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.