Future of Division III

Started by Ralph Turner, October 10, 2005, 07:27:51 PM

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Dave 'd-mac' McHugh

Per the grandfather - the rule wasn't going to be passed unless they put a grandfather clause in. That is the case with all rules, however part of the grandfather clause was that those with one DI program HAD to comply with Title IX and bring up another to compensate. Hopkins brought up women's lacrosse to compensate for men's lacrosse, Hobart brought up women's water polo to compensate for men's soccer, Colorado College brought up women's soccer to compensate for men's soccer. There are plenty of other examples in the hockey rhelm.

Yes, Hartwick tried to kill off DI soccer in the past, but the alums rallied and saved it. Really can't see it being saved now and water polo has to come back with them as a result.

Ryan spoke to it, the grandfather does force there to be two different budgets essentially and DIII teams can't directly benefit from the D1 brethren. Sure, there are things that help like when JHU got a new field for lacrosse, football, soccer, field hockey benefited with a new field (which was so badly needed; I could tell you stories about the old field having played on it when I was an SA). However, if you ever look at the field during a football game you will notice something specific - it was not designed, as most multi-purpose fields are, with football in mind. I can't tell you how many people are confused by the colors and the endzone, because the coloring has lacrosse in mind.

I am fine with the grandfather rule. Those who had D1 programs shouldn't be punished with the "all-division" rule because they existed prior. It also helped control schools who were just jumping around for no reason parts of their departments. Title IX also helped with some of this. I don't see schools who benefit because of their D1 brethren in any degree that makes it a problem. Heck, now at JHU they have a completely different building for lacrosse - removed them completely from the rest of the department. So be it. D1 raises it's money; D3 it's. It works for those small number of schools that have it.
Host of Hoopsville. USBWA Executive Board member. Broadcast Director for D3sports.com. Broadcaster for NCAA.com & several colleges. PA Announcer for Gophers & Brigade. Follow me on Twitter: @davemchugh or @d3hoopsville.

Pat Coleman

Colorado College is men's ice hockey, not men's soccer. Did I suddenly become the hockey expert?  ;D
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Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)

Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 06, 2018, 09:53:12 PM
Colorado College is men's ice hockey, not men's soccer. Did I suddenly become the hockey expert?

You're lucky nobody from Colorado Springs (other than my immediate family) knows this site exists - you can get drawn and quartered for disparaging CC hockey.  They built a 6,000 seat arena just for them - granted, it's gone bankrupt like seven times and continuously changes owners, but people love CC hockey out there and you can't say otherwise!
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Dave 'd-mac' McHugh

Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 06, 2018, 09:53:12 PM
Colorado College is men's ice hockey, not men's soccer. Did I suddenly become the hockey expert?  ;D

Eh - typo on my part. I meant ice hockey. I am not sure how I switched that even in my head. I called a Colorado College WSOC game last year at Georgetown and made the ice hockey reference... so it isn't like I don't know that one pretty well.
Host of Hoopsville. USBWA Executive Board member. Broadcast Director for D3sports.com. Broadcaster for NCAA.com & several colleges. PA Announcer for Gophers & Brigade. Follow me on Twitter: @davemchugh or @d3hoopsville.

Dave 'd-mac' McHugh

Host of Hoopsville. USBWA Executive Board member. Broadcast Director for D3sports.com. Broadcaster for NCAA.com & several colleges. PA Announcer for Gophers & Brigade. Follow me on Twitter: @davemchugh or @d3hoopsville.

Ron Boerger

Interesting - and NCAA Research posted this a couple of days ago:  https://twitter.com/NCAAResearch/status/970686891472416770

"While the number of student-athletes at Division III schools has increased by 5% over the past five years, the overall student body enrollment on those campuses has decreased by 3%."


smedindy

Quote from: Ron Boerger on March 06, 2018, 09:02:17 AM

I suppose it was originally to "soften the blow" for schools moving from D1 to D3.  My alma mater made the transition decades ago but kept the only D1 program where it had which had much success, tennis (including a student who won Wimbledon as a senior; yes, it was a long time ago).    After about 15 years the (IMO correct) decision was made that scholarship players in one sport did not fit the school's mission and the program was moved to D3 status.   More schools will continue to do that, but there will likely be a few outliers who want to keep the "prestige" of a D1 program or two. 

That said, it certainly was impressive to see our guys competing with John McEnroe's top-ranked Stanford squad during my time there; if memory serves (and this article backs it up), we dealt him his only collegiate singles loss.

You cannot be serious!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W54JbiiKHsQ

sunny

Quote from: Ron Boerger on March 07, 2018, 01:19:01 PM
Interesting - and NCAA Research posted this a couple of days ago:  https://twitter.com/NCAAResearch/status/970686891472416770

"While the number of student-athletes at Division III schools has increased by 5% over the past five years, the overall student body enrollment on those campuses has decreased by 3%."

That's an excellent topic. Many Division III schools will lean harder and harder on athletics as an enrollment driver, often under the notion that the school wants to grow or maintain and needs to keep its "ratio" (% of students who are athletes) intact in order to do so. The evidence would suggest that that's not the case nationally - the ratio is actually RISING as many of the schools struggle to keep their beds full. You wonder if there is a bubble in there somewhere.

(We've seen a specific subset of that bubble bursting in some cases - the large number of midwestern schools who added lacrosse - specifically men's - as enrollment driver. Many of these schools already had football, looked at the size of men's lacrosse rosters out east and thought that was a fix. What's happened at a number of those schools is a struggle to field a full roster, in some cases suspending or dropping the program all together. Obviously that's a very specific circumstance - such a large number of schools added it at a rapid rate that they are cannibalizing each other for the rather limited pool of regional recruits - and playing lacrosse in, say, Michigan is not as natural of a sell to a kid from the Mid-Atlantic or Northeast as playing down south or out west might be. But I do wonder if we'll see more, perhaps less pronounced, cases of this as departments continue to expand and roster expectations continue to increase.)

Gregory Sager

The specific enrollment driver provided by athletics is typically oriented towards resolving a lopsided female:male ratio as much as it is towards getting warm bodies through the door of the admissions department. Even when schools add women's sports alongside men's sports (probably in a great many cases for Title IX reasons, even if the school won't admit it), the idea is that men's sports tend to have significantly larger rosters than do their women's-sport counterparts. Look at midwestern-based schools that have men's and women's lacrosse, for example. Almost every midwestern school that has lacrosse programs has added them within the past decade or so -- and the size of the men's rosters far outstrips the size of the women's rosters, sometimes even doubling their size. With the way that men's volleyball has started to take off as a new sport, we could start to see this trend in volleyball as well.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

smedindy

What I have seen is a roster 'bloat' on the women's side - a large volleyball or soccer roster to offset some Title IX issues.

It's really noticeable in volleyball, when you have 20+ on a roster at times and very few subs (even if you have a designated server and play two setters).

Pat Coleman

Who are the new lacrosse schools which have struggled to maintain rosters? I haven't heard.
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Caz Bombers

Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 08, 2018, 02:14:00 PM
Who are the new lacrosse schools which have struggled to maintain rosters? I haven't heard.

Houghton, for one, added lacrosse when they moved in from NAIA to the Empire 8, they only have 15 or 16 guys this year. Anything less than 25 and you're asking for blowouts via exhaustion (at best) and injuries (at worst). I'm sure I could find several others. Bard (3rd or 4th year back since a false start around 2010) is 1-1 and I think they only played about 15 guys their first couple games.

Gregory Sager

Yeah, but Houghton and Bard are located in the traditional hotbed of lacrosse. It's been a major high-school sport in New York State for, heck, the better part of a century by now. What sunny specifically talked about are midwestern schools that have added lacrosse and are now have trouble filling out their rosters. It's because lacrosse is a new-ish sport in this part of the country, and there's still only a certain number of high schools that have lacrosse teams.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

Mr. Ypsi

Quote from: Gregory Sager on March 08, 2018, 05:51:55 PM
Yeah, but Houghton and Bard are located in the traditional hotbed of lacrosse. It's been a major high-school sport in New York State for, heck, the better part of a century by now. What sunny specifically talked about are midwestern schools that have added lacrosse and are now have trouble filling out their rosters. It's because lacrosse is a new-ish sport in this part of the country, and there's still only a certain number of high schools that have lacrosse teams.

True, but it is growing VERY rapidly in at least some parts of the midwest.  Son #1 (now 29) was a founding member of the first lacrosse team at Ypsilanti HS (he and a neighbor were the ONLY ones who had ANY experience whatsoever - they had been to a one-week camp :P).  I haven't tracked down the actual numbers, but my impression is that the number of Michigan high schools offering lacrosse has more than doubled in the last two decades.  Most of them are probably as bad as my son's team was back then, but there are a number of schools that are nationally competitive.  I have no idea how many potential college lacrosse players they produce, but it surely must be at least enough to fill the rosters of 3-5 college teams.

Popularity of different sports rise and fall over time - I'd judge lacrosse (in Michigan, at least) to be about where soccer was in the 70s or 80s.  And no one seems worried about the state of college soccer these days!  (When I was growing up (50s and early 60s), no one in my part of downstate Illinois, except for 'non-Americanized' ethnics, had ever heard of soccer!)

Dave 'd-mac' McHugh

Another reason to add lacrosse wasn't just because it can help enrollment, but because the sport is expanding as previously mentioned. I haven't heard of schools struggling with it... or dropping it. The biggest problem in DIII lacrosse is the fact the men's committee won't expand regions (need to double-check they haven't solved that for this season). That could hamper things, but I digress.
Host of Hoopsville. USBWA Executive Board member. Broadcast Director for D3sports.com. Broadcaster for NCAA.com & several colleges. PA Announcer for Gophers & Brigade. Follow me on Twitter: @davemchugh or @d3hoopsville.