NCAA Div 1 Scholarship Facts….

So you don’t have a NCAA Division 1 scholarship yet….Please do NOT panic!
I know its hard not to get stressed out while waiting around for the prize you’ve been working so hard to achieve all these years, the coveted college scholarship! Especially, when it seems everyone else is getting signed and you might be left out in the cold.Here’s my best advice (listen closely because it’s the best pearl of wisdom I have to offer);

Take a deep breath and relax! 

There is plenty of time to sort things out and I’m not just being optimistic, I have some interesting statistics to prove I’m right!

After seven years of recruiting from and placing players in the NCAA from Tier II leagues like the BCHL it was becoming clear that teams were going after elite players seemingly younger each year. Of course, this was a direct result of the WHL policy to conduct their bantam draft at 14 years of age and the need for teams to make ‘commitments’ early to compete. However, the NCAA system is limited in when they are allowed to contact players and also how early they can ‘sign’ them to letters of intent. In fact, Division I college hockey coaches are not allowed to initiate contact with prospective student athletes until June 15th of their sophomore year (End of grade 10) in high school. That means they cannot reply to emails, text messages, or return phone calls prior to that date. This can be circumvented through the use of agents/family advisors, you can contact them directly yourself or in some cases, contact is made through other nefarious practices by the teams themselves. Long story short, a trend emerged of numerous players committing very early (Kyle Turris unofficially signed and committed to Wisconsin at age 14, or so the rumour went….).

Thus, the perception became if you were any good, and hoped to play for an elite team, you had to sign as soon as possible.

I decided to test that theory and the results were very surprising. I did an analysis of two seasons in the BCHL, using the data on their own website from the 2007-08 & 2008-09 seasons which listed which of their players had committed to the NCAA and at what age they had done so. Without boring you on the methodology used (I will post a complete methodology as a PDF attached to Part 2), my many years as a legal social scientist came in handy as I had to sort out truth from fiction and come up with reliable statistics to provide some clarity on the subject.

I wanted to know at what age players were signing NCAA scholarships in the BCHL and what significance if any, the results of this data has for the NCAA bound athlete and their parents?  
Here are the BCHL results which show the amount of Players Signed, the overall percentage from that age group signed of the total and at what age Players were listed when they signed their NCAA Scholarship letters of intent:

1)    16 Years of Age – 4 Players – 2.89%
2)    17 years of Age – 1 Player – 0.72%
3)    18 Years of Age – 17 Players – 12.3%
4)    19 Years of Age – 29 Players – 21%
5)    20 Years of Age – 48 Players – 34.8%
6)    21 Years of Age – 39 Players – 28.3%

A quick look at the results shows us three outstanding facts.

Firstly, that ONLY 15.9% of the total scholarships given out over those 2 seasons were given to players 18 Years old or younger. In fact, for 16-17 year olds, ONLY an average of 2.5 Players per Season actually secured scholarships.

Secondly, 63% of ALL BCHL scholarships are awarded to players when they are in their final two years of junior eligibility (20-21 years of age).

Lastly, over 84% of ALL scholarships are awarded to players over 18 years of age, which means, the overwhelming majority of players secure their academic future, AFTER their NHL draft year has passed.

Well this seems like a good place to take a break. Let those stats sink in and we will discuss what the potential repercussions of these results are in Part 2 of our analysis later this week.

More College information at The Advocate!