Question regarding available scholarships in D1 women's lacrosse:
D1 programs have maximum of 12 scholarships. Assuming the school is fully funded with 12 out of state tuition amount, does it make a difference whether the recruit is in-state or out of state? For example, college "A" is a public school in Maryland with cost for in-state recruit at $25,000 per year and out of state recruit at $50,000 per year. In calculating how many scholarships available, does the school have $600,000 to divide up among the players anyway they want to? I guess what I'm asking is... does it matter whether the recruit is in-state or out of state (for fully funded public schools)? Hope I didn't confuse you too much.
Excellent question. The NCAA Compliance committee does not calculate scholarships in terms of dollars (as we are parents will). The NCAA literally considers the fractions of scholarships regardless of the value.
In your example with a $25,000 in-state and $50,000 out-of-state tuition, the following five examples are identical from an NCAA Compliance perspective :
(a) Two in-state students receiving 0.25 each.
(b) One in-state and one out-of-state student each receiving 0.25.
(c) Two out-of-state students receiving 0.25 each.
(d) One in-state student receiving 0.50.
(e) One out-of-state student receiving 0.50.
In all five cases, 0.50 is spent towards the limit of 12.0 NCAA Division I women's lacrosse scholarships. [Remember, the current number is 12.6 for NCAA Division I men's lacrosse. The NCAA Division II limit is 10.8 for men and 9.9 for women.]
This is where the athletic department works very carefully with the financial aid office in order to most appropriately fund undergraduate student-athlete scholarships in the most cost effective (and compliance effective) manner.
The topic has a second layer which more technically describes the scholarship process : some sports are considered headcount sports while others are considered equivalency sports.
- "Head-count" sports, in which the NCAA limits the total number of individuals that can receive athletic scholarships, but allows each player to receive up to a full scholarship.
- "Equivalency" sports, in which the NCAA limits the total financial aid that a school can offer in a given sport to the equivalent of a set number of full scholarships. Roster limitations may or may not apply, depending on the sport.
Men's and women's lacrosse, both equivalency sports, are measure in total "counted" scholarships.
