Where in the world did you come up with 3-5% for D1 softball? That's not even close. While I agree with your overall point about not counting on a full ride, your figures and examples are well off It s NOT common practice to to take a large group of freshman knowing only a few will pan out. It happens at some of the top 20 schools and all schools understand not every girl will stick around through their senior year, but most don't make a practice of committing kids with the intention of dropping them.
Schools "are not allowed to use all their allotted scholarships"? Do you mean that many smaller schools CHOOSE not to use their full allotment? If a team doesn't use all their scholarships it's coming from their institution, unless the school is on probation.
A big "THANK YOU" to all of the fast pitch parents sharing their DD's experience with recruitment, scholarships and playing college ball!
D2 or D3 schools would NOT be competitive in the power five conferences. They might win a few fall scrmmages, but that's a far cry from being competitive over a full conference schedule. Mid major conferences, sure. SEC, Pac 12 or Big 12. No way.
You are very much mistaken if you think that schools are giving 25% scholarships for softball(excluding flame throwing pitchers). With incoming freshman classes between 5-15 players the math just doesn't add up. 5% scholarship is more realistic for athletic. The rest is academic. Word to the wise: Don't underfund those 5-7-9 education accounts so that you can travel across the country and watch Sally play softball. Only do the travel if you can still afford to fund the accounts. Otherwise little Sally might not be able to afford to accept the scholarship that she is offered.
My DD 3 is class of 2020 as well. We haven't started the recruitment process for a lot of reasons, one of them being I'm hardly ever in town to help her out. Also she isn't a big stud blowing away much older girls --- yet. She tends to improve quite a bit, and to get better than girls who have been playing longer and used to be better. We have no idea how good she will get.