Are there full scholarships for sports like x-country, golf or tennis?
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Anonymous
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sports scholarships are available at D1 and D2 (and Ivy League doesn't do sports scholarships). D3 can give merit money but not for sports.
So when your mom's friend says "my grandkid got a full swimming scholarship to Yale,"- they are lying. |
Anonymous
are you talking about D1 schools that are ranked inT20 for cross country? or more mid tier schools |
Anonymous
Both and not just for XC- for all three seasons of running (XC, indoor track, outdoor track) |
Anonymous
| Not sure theee are full for XC |
Anonymous
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My kid plays soccer - it’s also very competitive for a full scholarship, but I have no idea how it compares to golf, etc. If you really need 100%, then I see a lot of compromises being made. Like in-state, not a great team and/ot high acceptance rate. If you’re not the best of the best, you have to flex somewhere.
For D3, there IS merit money, but again, if you’re chasing money, then you need to pick a lower stats school. The Williams at full price kid could get good merit money at Gettysburg, but $0 at Williams. It’s all a series of trades. |
Anonymous
| Familar with Tennis. Tennis scholarships (meager as they were) are in flux for 2025–26. Division I schools that opted into the House v. NCAA framework now use roster caps (not sport-by-sport scholarship limits), and women’s tennis is shifting from a headcount sport to an equivalency model with up to 10 scholarships and a 10-player roster cap. Competition is heightened by significant international recruiting (over 60% of D1 women’s tennis players are foreign-born). |
Anonymous
| Look at D1 college tennis rosters. On a team of 12, generally only 1-3 Americans. |
Anonymous
No, but someone in my neighborhood. I knew them since they were in kindergarten with my child, and yes, they were very good. Unfortunately, like many runners, eventually ran into some injuries. |
Anonymous
One of my relatives did this. The team was very tight knit and so was a great support system at the Academy. They got to travel quite a bit with the team as well. |
Anonymous
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Put your assets into a trusted family member's name, quit your job (or work at a chill, poorly paid nonprofit, or just "consult" with no clients), (optional: move to a poor/rural area), send your kid to an Ivy or any D3 school that meets full need, and ta-da!
Enjoy your "scholarship". |
Anonymous
Shorter version of this: Step 1: Get good at sport Step 2: ???? Step 3: Profit! |
Anonymous
| full scholarships for any sport are rare. very often there is a pool of money per sport so to make a good team, they will have to divide the money among the students. |
Anonymous
Things have changed a lot this year. Old info or ways thing were done even last year is not relevant |
Anonymous
Sean McGorty was second in the nation in XC and the two mile, and was viewed by many to have a higher upside than his rival from New Jersey. He certainly merited a full ride, but it shows you what kind of talent it takes to earn one in distance running. He and his brother are great kids, and no surprise as mother Vicki was a great athlete at UNC when my brother was an All American and Phi Beta Kappa math student there. The new P4 economic arrangements make full rides even harder to obtain today. Conferences like the SEC have imposed roster limits. 15 for XC, 35 for track. The track number is a killer. There are years when Arkansas has three 26 foot long jumpers. Today one of them may have k to be cut or spend a gallon year at a JC. A school like powerhouse Arkansas doesn’t have roster spots for some 3:43 1500 guys. You have to be able to score on the track and do well in XC in the conference and otherwise. The increased influx of foreign athletes (they have always been present) makes the scholarship scene even tighter. Foreign runners including some very very good ones from East Africa who require no development, typically need full rides to make it here. I suspect of the top 25 at NC XC’s this year at least 15 if not more will be foreign athletes. And the top 5 likely will be all foreign. Roster spots are now nearly as scarce as scholarships at top schools. The Ivies with no scholarships and no budget eating big time football are a real draw. Look at Villanova’s coach, the all time record holder for the number of sub 4 miles. Villanova is the best men’s program on the East Coast, and Marcus has stated he needs to look at every recruit today holistically, including the ability to score in cross country, anchor relays, and so on. The number of guys who can run 10k in cross country and anchor the distance medley or 4 x 800 at Penn are scarce. They had two this year. Very little development today. Marcus was a 4:08 miler from Ireland who was developed by Jumbo Elliott to 3:55 in two years. Today you need the ready made 3:55 guy. There are still scholarship available at a number of schools. But the days of rolling up to power schools with hot high school times expecting a lot of money no longer exist. |
Anonymous
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I totally disagree with the above. Our experience between last year and this year is completely different- schools that offered 60% last year are offering 90% this year. More schools are making offers overall. Schools where no money was available suddenly have funds.
performance is expected as a freshman to keep those funds but money is much different this year. |