Tryout Season (aka Silly Season)

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Apr 28, 2014
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There is a team in our area with a dad coach who's two daughter's both pitch and pitch 85% of the innings.. What's that called? Double daddy ball?
 
May 6, 2015
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While I agree with this in general and make provisions on my team for school sports, by HS, as others have said, she'll need to choose between the two about which sport to become the most serious about. Just remember, there are far more women's swimming scholarships available than SB at the moment.

absolutely, in HS by say sohpmore year, she will have to pick one to focus on. She is a 2007, so she has time. older DD is going through this now, has chosen to focus primarily on FH, but is still going to swim HS and summer swim league, but FH is priority.
 
Nov 18, 2013
2,255
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While I agree with this in general and make provisions on my team for school sports, by HS, as others have said, she'll need to choose between the two about which sport to become the most serious about. Just remember, there are far more women's swimming scholarships available than SB at the moment.

Curious how you arrived at that? I think it's the other way around.
 

marriard

Not lost - just no idea where I am
Oct 2, 2011
4,312
113
Florida
Curious how you arrived at that? I think it's the other way around.

There is roughly 2.5x as many female athletes playing softball in college versus swimming (roughly 33000 softball, 13,500 swimming)

However if a NCAA college has a swimming program, they likely have more scholarships FOR swimming than they do for softball

Swimming:
D1 - 14 scholarships (softball 12)
D2 - 8.1 scholarships (softball 7.2)
NAIA - 8 (softball 10)
JUCO - 14 (softball 24)

Yes these numbers are clearly arbitrary.

However there is just less programs offering swimming:
Swimming
NCAA DI: 199 (SB 296)
NCAA DII: 106 (SB 291)
NAIA: 36 (SB 194)
NJCAA: 65 (SB 354)

At D3 schools there is 415 softball programs versus less than 200 for swimming.

I am also told that many swim programs have trouble filling teams so it is possible there is more free scholarships available than there are in softball where I have not yet run into a program that isn't spending every scholarship dollar they can get access to.
 
Jul 16, 2013
4,659
113
Pennsylvania
Interesting stuff. When DD was younger we tried to convince her to play golf. At least at that point in time there were several schools having trouble giving away female golf scholarships. I'm not sure if that is still the case or not.
 
Nov 18, 2013
2,255
113
There is roughly 2.5x as many female athletes playing softball in college versus swimming (roughly 33000 softball, 13,500 swimming)

However if a NCAA college has a swimming program, they likely have more scholarships FOR swimming than they do for softball

Swimming:
D1 - 14 scholarships (softball 12)
D2 - 8.1 scholarships (softball 7.2)
NAIA - 8 (softball 10)
JUCO - 14 (softball 24)

Yes these numbers are clearly arbitrary.

However there is just less programs offering swimming:
Swimming
NCAA DI: 199 (SB 296)
NCAA DII: 106 (SB 291)
NAIA: 36 (SB 194)
NJCAA: 65 (SB 354)

At D3 schools there is 415 softball programs versus less than 200 for swimming.

I am also told that many swim programs have trouble filling teams so it is possible there is more free scholarships available than there are in softball where I have not yet run into a program that isn't spending every scholarship dollar they can get access to.

Using the figures you supplied for D1, D2 and NAIA I get 7587 available scholarships for softball and only 3933 for swimming and diving. If NJCAA is included it would add another 8496 available scholarships for softball to 910 for swimming and diving. I left that out because I highly doubt most NJCAA’s aren’t using all 24 scholarships.

I know many D1 and D2 softball programs don’t use all of their allotted scholarships so these would be estimates. I think its clear there are far more softball scholarships available than swimming and diving. Maybe he meant as you suggested it’s easier to get a swimming scholarship because they have trouble filling teams.
 
Oct 3, 2011
3,478
113
Right Here For Now
Using the figures you supplied for D1, D2 and NAIA I get 7587 available scholarships for softball and only 3933 for swimming and diving. If NJCAA is included it would add another 8496 available scholarships for softball to 910 for swimming and diving. I left that out because I highly doubt most NJCAA’s aren’t using all 24 scholarships.

I know many D1 and D2 softball programs don’t use all of their allotted scholarships so these would be estimates. I think its clear there are far more softball scholarships available than swimming and diving. Maybe he meant as you suggested it’s easier to get a swimming scholarship because they have trouble filling teams.

Sorry. I don't get on nearly as often as I used to.

While swimming AS's are fewer in number, there are fewer athletes competing for them versus softball. Also, as stated before, some colleges fail to fill their swim teams whereas I don't know of one softball program that isn't full. I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could find more than a few but I'd bet the house I could find far more swim programs with unfilled spots even though the swim programs are approximately 50% of SB programs.

I know of three state college swim programs that have problems filling their teams year after year. 2 of them offered a couple of extremely talented SB players that swam competitively over the Winter months full-rides at the age of 14 to go swim for them. They verbaled and quit SB. Now they're swimming for their college of choice.
 

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