College Soccer Athletes

On February 28, 2005, I experienced one of the most exciting events that anyone could ever experience – winning a State Championship. The day my soccer team made history is a day I’ll never forget. However it is not just that day we won the title, but the whole experience of the preceding season that got us there. From start to finish, my team’s 2004-2005 season taught me that the platitude is true. You can do anything you set your mind to.

I’m a fourth year varsity soccer player at an all-boys private school of less than 550 students. Despite our small enrollment, for athletics we play in the division of the largest schools, mainly ones with enrollments over 2000 students. We can argue the fairness of our placement as long as we like, but it won’t change our position. We have to accept the challenge of playing larger schools.

Athletics are a big attraction to many students when looking at colleges. When college sports programs have success, research done by Pope and Pope show that there is a boost in applications that the colleges receive from students. “Applications [after] a Championship add 7-8 percent, with a big effect in the immediate year and little effect after one year.” It was found that when colleges have winning athletic teams get more applications sent in from all levels of student and not just athletes. This is found true for basketball and football. Not only increase in applications is found but also found after success in football there is a growth in enrollment, this is not found true for basketball (Getz and Siegfried “What Does Intercollegiate Athletics Do…”). “David Schmidly the president of the University of New Mexico said “One of the most effective ways to market your university nationally is to have a really quality athletic program. It helps recruit faculty, students, and donors. It helps with the image of the whole university.” (qtd. in Getz and Siegfried “College Sports: The Mystery of the Zero-Sum Game.”)

In our society, sport carries an important role because it could bring so many positive impacts on human such as development of teamwork, communication skills and create opportunity for entertainment as well as many businesses around the world. However, looking at the negative side, sport can cost a huge amount of money and it could create significant negative effects on education, specifically universities in various ways. According to USA Today News, the author

* Soccer holds the greatest growth curve: In 1977, only 2.8% of campuses offered soccer for women, however 88.6% of campuses offer it now – an increase by 40 times (40 fold increase). (Williams 2007, 34).

Athletes in college receives a lot of attention, through their practices and performance on and off the field.be. They uplift the names of their colleges and give it a name that would otherwise not be acquired. They make their college mates proud of their college, and they may boost enrolment of many others, which would benefit the school. Athletics stand a position to earn a school other benefits, not only to the players but other students too. They may win study scholarships for their school mates by their exemplary performance (Owens et al 20).

Another reason why colleges should support their sports teams because of how NCAA and NCAAF helps college student athletes with their academic work and their opportunities they have

Our mission is to provide young scholars, student-athletes, and adults with comprehensive and supplementary academic services that cater to the individual learning and functioning needs. Therefore, we have no doubt that this is a great initiative that will bring about a positive rapport between your student athletes, as it establishes a “spirit of community” between our parents, student athletes and other wrap- around services. I hope to hear from you

Seven Roswell sophomores were selected to be on the Varsity girls soccer squad this year. This is an impressive accomplishment, because the team is typically dominated by upper-classmen. These students are Bella Akin (left back), Elise Baron (midfield), Meghan Connelly (winger/striker/right or left midfielder), Sienna Kent (winger/striker/right or left midfielder), Hayden Hammerman (center back), Anne Lescher (right back), and Kristin Liquori (goalie). At tryouts, the coach saw great potential in these players, especially in their ability to communicate and work together.

“Big time college sports... selects athletes mainly for their athletics, not academics, interests, and abilities” this shows that in reality colleges view athletes more as “athletes-students” than “student-athletes” (Eckard 211). This only goes to show why the graduation rate for college athletes is so low. However higher education make their graduation rate seem more favorable so that they can continue to get and recruit more skilled amateur players to generate millions of dollars for their facilities. Although some may say colleges do a effective job of taking care of and graduating their student-athletes, conversely colleges’ student athletes graduation rate is low and the student athletes don't get what they desire. If colleges start putting the students first in the term “student-athletes” then there would be more college student-athletes making the grade.

Throughout history American college sports has been on the rise, attracting people from all walks of life through the lure of intense passion and competition that is demonstrated by athletes and fans alike. At the centre of the immense success of American college sports is its governing organization, known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which has now become one of the most recognizable organizations in all of sports. As per their mission statement, the NCAA’s purpose is, “ To be an integral part of higher education and to focus on the development of our student-athletes.” (NCAA, 2016) With their recent growth, the NCAA has taken the popularization of college sports from a national level to an international level, as

Big-time sports in college has become one of the most impactful experience for the college’s fans and students. In the past two decades the boom of college sports such as football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball have grown exponentially. Some the reason why this has happened is the scholarship sanctions the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) put into effect a few years ago; what the sanctions established were that the “big” schools such as the University of Florida, University of Texas, University of Alabama among other school similar to them couldn’t offer all of their scholarships to the top athlete coming out of High School, making all the smaller schools more competitive on the national level.

The financial resources needed to support the athletes are enormous. Colleges are not places for doing business but rather to provide education and nurture identified talents. Therefore, encouraging

  In recent years the soccer association has grown from one hundred and fifty players to three hundred players. In doing so they needed to expand their facilities. The local municipality did not have the resources nor the soccer association for doing such a project. With my continued involvement with the soccer association throughout the years, I knew I had to do something to help them. With helping to get this project done, I could get the children of the area the same experience I had as a child only better.

Nelson has insight from 1993 to now that has been around the area since he was a graduate student. He says, Because St. Thomas has become the largest school in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC), it has been able to develop and fund its programs better than the other smaller schools. As a result, it has become an athletic powerhouse.” St. Thomas is just that with some students playing one than more sport and has been in 8 NCAA playoff tournaments (UST, n.d.). Students that didn’t want to invest all their time in athletics by going to a D1 or D2 school goes to St. Thomas to achieve on the field and in the classroom. The student-athletes take pride in their school and know that they are a huge part of the institutional by being a part of the institution that other students dream ab out when they were little