Playing in the P5 in 2023

Now I know that some (a lot) of this is going to change with all the craziness happening with conference realignment right now - I don't think we are done yet! - But I wrote about this back in 2019 and so I wanted to revisit some of these statistics and see what has changed potentially. To get a reference point, you can go read my "Playing In The P5" blog HERE.

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There were two things that jumped out at me right away when I was doing this. They are connected, but still interesting to process. The first thing that jumped out at me was the roster sizes. Multiple teams had rosters in the 20s (10 teams) and several more were close with 19 (9 teams). This has increased the amount of the average froster size from 16 to 17. This isn't a huge increase, but it does make a difference. Especially when you start looking at the 2nd thing that jumped out at me and that was walk-ons. Since D1 can only have 12 athletes on scholarship at a time that makes figuring out the amount of walk-ons rather simple. With the teams that have 20 or 21 athletes on their roster, that means 8 or 9 athletes are walking on. Almost 50% of your roster in this case is walking on. With the average size of a college roster going from 16 (the number I've been using for the last 4 years) to 17, we now just added 1 more walk-on on average to each team. This increases the percentage to 30% compared to 25% back in 2019.

2019 Numbers

Athletes playing in the Power 5 - 1020

Athletes on scholarship in the Power 5 - 756

Smallest : Largest (Roster size) - 12 : 22

Average Roster size in the Power 5 - 16

% Athletes on scholarship in the Power 5 - 75%

2023 Numbers

Athletes playing in the Power 5 - 1148

Athletes on scholarship in the Power 5 - 804

Smallest : Largest (Roster size) - 13 : 21

Average Roster size in the Power 5 - 17

% Athletes on scholarship in the Power 5 - 70%

One I was able to crunch all the numbers and put it all into perspective, the numbers as they relate to the state of Texas were interesting as well. The last time I ran the numbers, there were 160 athletes from the state of Texas playing in the P5. The vast majority of them (110) were playing at schools in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. That accounted for over 60% of the athletes from Texas playing in the P5. Now the most recent numbers tell a different story!

There are currently 188 athletes from the state of Texas playing in the P5. This is roughly the same percentage of athletes within the P5 as it was a few years ago at 16.4%. The interesting part here is that the percentage of athletes at these Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana P5 schools has dropped significantly to 40%. Only 76 athletes from the state of Texas are currently playing at a Texas, Oklahoma or Louisiana P5 school. The biggest outlier here is Oklahoma with only 5 athletes from the state of Texas. This information seems to communicate that athletes are NOT staying in Texas or at least not as many as have in the past. I think that the transfer portal is the biggest factor here, but I don't have any data to support that theory as of right now.

Conclusion:

It's still really hard to play at a Power 5 school (Power 4 here soon). That part has not and will not change. We are still looking at 45 athletes from Texas committing to a P5 school each year. That is still a large number in my opinion. Texas is a big state with big club volleyball. Dallas, Houston and Austin have a ton of clubs and a ton of options for college coaches to choose from. You aren't just competing against athletes in your own city. You are competing against athletes in your state and across the entire country. When it comes to recruiting there are 280 other D1 schools that you can reach out to. There are another 300 D2 schools you can contact across the country. Try NOT to limit yourself to the big brands and programs. Look for programs and campuses that will be an all around benefit to you and your success on and off the court. If you're from Texas, think about whether or not you are one of those 45 in your recruiting class. Finally, there are great programs out there that aren't part of a P5 conference! Go find a coach that believes in you and believes that you can and will do great things for that program.

If you have more questions about this or want to see some of the other numbers I found, please let me know and subscribe to the blog archive! Those subscriptions give me the time and opportunity to dive deeper into this kind of information and statistic.

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