Have Your Nose Up in the Air About D3 Tennis?
You will be humbled very quickly!
Discover, develop and dedicate! How about completive excellence, having a player who will be a four-year impact player and maintain a GPA above the student body average? Do these attributes resonate with you at all? I should hope so as these are fantastic qualities when reinforced throughout the collegiate journey. Qualities like these almost always produce a graduate to send off in the competitive world of life giving students a solid foundation. These are the qualities I look for in student athletes.
I am the head coach of the flagship Division III men’s tennis program in the SUNY System, as well as one of the top three women’s tennis teams in the State University of New York Conference. This is not a personal testimonial about SUNY Oneonta where I coach, but rather, a celebration of Division III tennis. I travel the state going to many USTA Tournaments and tennis academies to recruit players. Quite frankly, I am a little put off when parents or a potential student ask this first question. What kind of athletic scholarship can I expect from the institution? I give the honest answer and very quickly that family has crossed SUNY Oneonta and the Division III student/athlete experience off their short list before knowing the real facts. I infer they are waiting for that full scholarship to be given to that potential student athlete. I have even felt this attitude from a variety of tennis academies directly where their business model is based on the fact that they “send players on full scholarship to Division I schools.”
I am going to give you some hard facts to digest. Only about two percent of high school seniors win sports scholarships every year to NCAA institutions. The average athletic scholarship is less than $11,000. Being an athlete, however, can boost a teenager’s admission chances because all schools, regardless of whether they offer scholarships, desire strong sports programs. You do not have to be a superstar athlete to increase your chance of admission. You do not need to capture a sports scholarship to ultimately make the college tab more affordable. In reality, athletic scholarships are often not as generous as regular financial aid or merit scholarships that tennis players can earn for their academics and other talents.
Do you still have your nose in the air about Division III athletics where sports are well-balanced with the more important academic rigors? Competitive collegiate tennis can augment a student athlete’s education with a valuable experience providing tools that are used every day in the real world. I think it probably safe to say that you are not knocking off Rafael Nadal or Serena Williams in the Wimbledon finals anytime soon unless you can beat the billion to one odds! Buy a lottery ticket; you have a better chance of winning that than winning Wimbledon.
Last year, I sent graduating players from my team off to get great jobs at places like JP Morgan, one got a job at a top eight accounting firm, one ran for political office and all graduating seniors are working in the career fields they prepared for while at college.
So to all the snobs out there, get your priorities in order! In Division III, you will play a high level of tennis, get a great education and get prepared for life. You will get coaches who support you in your studies, encourage players to make an impact, both on and off the court.
Do you still want to play tennis at a Division I or II school? Great! Just know this … you will disproportionality work on your tennis and perhaps studies potentially could take a back seat. You have to be careful in selecting the school you want. Rest assured though, you are not going to win the U.S. Open the year after you graduate. You will have to look for work or go to graduate school. Will you be prepared?
One final thought for you dreamers out there … consider this: John Isner, a successful American playing professionally on the ATP Tour, played NCAA tennis for Division I University of Georgia and lost in the finals of the individual NCAA Championships singles tournament and achieved a career-best number nine in the world. Really impressive and indeed world class … no Wimbledon or U.S. Open Title though! Can you accomplish this? Maybe, but right now there are only six American men in the top 100 ATP World Rankings and eight women in the WTA World Rankings. You might consider a better path to success, and that is to Discover, Develop and Dedicate at the Division III Level, I’ll bet heavily on your success!
