3 Best Sports for a College Scholarship

If you love sports but also want to pursue higher education, you don’t have to pick one. What’s more, you can get a sports scholarship, continue to develop your athletic talent, and gain new knowledge. And if you need help getting in, you can always turn to admission essay writing service essayshark.com where you can find professional help online. Now let’s talk closely about the sports scholarships.

Secrets about Sports Scholarships

There are approximately 138,000 athletic scholarships in the United States from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). This may seem like a lot to you, but alas, it is not. Approximately 1,000,000 boys play soccer professionally, but there are only 19,500 soccer scholarships. Nearly 603,000 girls are involved professionally in high school athletics, and there are only 4,500 scholarships for that sport. The size and conditions of scholarships can vary dramatically depending on the sport and division of the NCAA. The fact that some sports offer more scholarships does not mean that it is easier to get it.

When determining the easiest sports to win a scholarship, students should consider certain factors. They include:

• The number of applicants for spots;
• The size of the team roster;
• Amount of funding;
• Number of scholarships;
• Academic requirements for the scholarship.

The average athletic scholarship in the United States is $10,400. Only four types of athletic scholarships can offer you full funding: soccer, men’s and women’s basketball, and women’s volleyball. If you exclude soccer and men’s basketball from the total list, the average scholarship drops to $8,700.

Besides, the National Collegiate Athletic Association tries to distribute the money in a beneficial way. For example, a soccer coach is given ten scholarships, but instead of distributing the money among ten students, he divides it among 15 in order to attract more interesting athletes. This practice results in a very small amount of scholarship money.

The best sports to get a scholarship

Today there are more than 40 programs in the United States that offer athletic scholarships.

Keep in mind that sports scholarships in the United States are divided into male and female. And if ladies have a chance to get a scholarship for beach basketball, the representatives of the stronger sex do not. The same is true, for example, for freestyle wrestling; if you are a male, you may qualify for a scholarship, but if you are a female, then no matter how good an athlete you are, you will not be given a scholarship.

Today, lacrosse, hockey, and baseball have the highest scholarship rate among men. As for women, hockey, soccer, and lacrosse are the most popular and quantitative.

There is a significant difference between the sports that give the most scholarships and the sports where athletes are most likely to get a scholarship. In this article, we will focus on sports that are the easiest to get a scholarship in and the factors that determine that.

What are the easiest sports for men to get a scholarship in?

How do you figure out which sport to choose to have the best chance of getting a scholarship? You should research the percentage of high school athletes who go on to play college sports and receive some sort of athletic scholarship.

Lacrosse

This is the easiest sport to get an athletic scholarship. Lacrosse is popular mostly in America, so it has almost no international competition. Based on data, about 110,000 players were involved in lacrosse in high school and more than 14,000 in college. Consequently, more than 12% of high school students go on to the next level. This figure is many times higher than in other sports. Division I men’s lacrosse offers more than 1,000 scholarships. At the same time, there are approximately 3,300 players in Division I. Based on that, 30 percent of students have a chance of getting a scholarship.

Baseball

Baseball is a national sport, and almost every high school and teen movie features high school baseball players trying to impress a coach and get a scholarship. Certainly, this sport is more mainstream and popular than the previous ones. However, the odds of getting a scholarship are still higher than in other sports. Over 11% of baseball players from high school go on to college. About 35% of division players can get scholarships, which is quite high.

Hockey

This sport is in third place, as about 10 percent of high school students go on to the college level. It is considered more competitive but still offers a significant number of scholarships compared to other sports. According to recent data, there are about 1,800 players in Division I men’s hockey. They are eligible for more than 1,000 scholarships. However, the sport has more competition among international students and players from club teams and junior leagues. All of them are also fighting for college spots. 

If you study such analytical data, you can easily estimate your chances of getting a college athletic scholarship. So you need to take into account the percentage of athletes who go from high school to college, the number of scholarships, and players in the division.