Recruiting Roadblocks - Financial Barriers

I talk to almost every team at every club I work with about scholarships. It's kind of a lot of information. I also spend a chunk of time talking about scholarships on my online program "So, You'd Like To Get Recruited?" Scholarships are a foundational piece of knowledge that is necessary to understand the recruiting process.

I talk about this a lot because not every athlete is going to get a full-ride scholarship. Surprised by that? I hope not.

Not every family has the ability to pay for school. Volleyball is often a way for athletes to help offset the overall cost of college. Keep in mind that NOT every athlete gets a full-ride. Let's run some of the numbers.

There are roughly 440,000 high school volleyball players across the country. Only 17,000 of those are playing D1, D2 or D3 volleyball. That means we have a little less than 4% playing NCAA volleyball. I like to increase that number up to 5% and throw in NAIA and Juco athletes as well. Only about 1.2% of high school athletes are playing D1 volleyball less than that are on scholarship. Roughly 25% of the D1 athletes we see on rosters are walking-on and not receiving scholarship. That means only 75% of the athletes playing D1 volleyball are actually on scholarship. With D2 we see very few athletes getting full-rides. It's certainly not impossible, it's just unlikely. Often schools can combine athletic and academic scholarships to really create a nice package, but it's still not usually going to be a full-ride. Because D2 schools can put as many athletes on scholarship as they are able, you can have athletes that are only on $100s of scholarship.

Walking on to a D1 volleyball program can be expensive. Even if you're going to get scholarship your last two seasons, those first two years can be pricey depending on the school and depending on the location. Out-of-state tuition costs can be pricey. Financially it can make more sense for an athlete to get a partial scholarship at a local D2 program.

Remember there are less than 1,000 D1 full-ride scholarships available in your recruiting class. Roughly 3 per school.

I encourage all families to really consider how they are going to pay for college. Begin looking into options that are going to be a good athletic fit, but also schools that will be a good financial option.