Sports Can Play a Part in College Acceptances

The April 5^th Wall Street Journal had an interesting “Golf Journal” article by John Paul Newport about teen girls having a good shot at college golf scholarships.

Newport said: “….girls have better odds than boys do” (of getting college golf scholarships. “Only a third as many girls as boys play competitive golf in high school and on the junior-tournament circuits (the same gender ratio as for adults), yet there are substantially more total golf scholarships available for girls.”

Newport goes on to explain that the reason for more golf scholarships for girls is Title IX, the 1972 federal legislation mandating gender equity in college athletics. In many colleges, all-male football programs reduce the number of scholarships for boys in other sports.

Yet before any teen girls dash out to local golf courses to take up the sport, check the statistics of how good a girl has to be to get a college golf scholarship. “Unless they can regularly break 75 on 6,000-yard courses,” Newport says, “girls shouldn’t even think about applying to elite programs like those at Duke or UCLA.”

So why am I bringing up this topic if this opportunity is available for so few teen girls?

Because there are many other sports in colleges that need team members. And leaving scholarships opportunities aside, the coaches of these college sports teams may have a say in student acceptances.

Before you assume that your playing on your high school’s lacrosse team wouldn’t interest anybody, check out the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s website at www.ncaa.org to see which schools have college teams in your sport and gender. You may be surprised to learn that a college that interests you has a need for lacrosse players of your ability.