Athletic Support
Yes, some of the best scholarships go to sports stars, but only a relative few of them
So how do you become one of the fortunate few? In sports like swimming or track, many schools have time standards that eliminate the ambiguity. If a woman swims a 50-meter freestyle in under 24 seconds, she'll get some money from Brigham Young University, for one example; under 23 seconds, she's got a full ride. But who gets what is less defined in other sports. "We eventually end up looking at personality and skill level," says Ed Kaihatsu, assistant fencing coach at Northwestern University. Everyone says they need a scholarship, he points out, but parents forget that coaches have access to the same information as the financial aid office.
Screen time. Before negotiations can begin, would-be jocks need to put themselves on coaches' radar screens. Most college athletes tend to play their sports year-round in high school. But, coaches say, there's more to getting a scholarship than just dominating your local soccer field. "We can't be everywhere to watch everyone play," says Elaine Michaelis, women's athletic director at BYU. It's up to the athlete to clue coaches in on where and when they're going to be in action. "Anytime you know you'll be in the vicinity of a school, or in a regional or national competition," she says, "let the coach know." Summer camps run by college coaches are also a great way not only to make yourself known but to get a bead on whether you like them.
Perseverance, for the vast majority of would-be college athletes, may ultimately be the only way to get a coach's attention. Take Josh Line, a walk-on to the football team at the University of Oregon. For a year, Line struggled to find his niche, working two jobs to pay the bills, putting on 30 pounds of muscle, and memorizing the 7,000 possible formations of the team's offense. Eventually, he clawed his way onto the Ducks' second team--and into a scholarship worth around $25,000 a year. By his junior year, he was in the starting lineup. "Sticking with it was the best decision I ever made," he says. Sometimes, it seems, playing the odds can pay off.
advertisement
