<p>What does it take to get a scholarship in some lesser know sports for women? A few recruited more on athletic potential than experience in the sport.</p>
<p>Crew isn’t that unusual for women. There are actually fewer opportunities for a male athlete to be recruited for crew. Like many sports there is very little financial incentive for most rowers. </p>
<p>D was a recruited athlete for crew - a couple D1 and mostly D3. It was a wild ride through the recruitment process. </p>
<p>In the end she is attending a college that does not have NCAA crew - only club. But she is receiving academic credit for it - and it may have influenced the admissions process to some extent.</p>
<p>Given that few HSs have crew teams and few areas have it on a high club level, it is far more rare than playing common sports like basketball, volleyball softball etc. Hockey even moreso. Far less competition for these scholies than the bigger sports.</p>
<p>Women’s Hockey and Crew may not be popular in Lynchburg, but I would hardly call them “unusual sports.”</p>
<p>Using your own citation, there are about 40 members on the Wisconsin women’s crew team. More so than on the more “common” and “bigger” W women’s basketball and volleyball teams combined.</p>
<p>Given that mens crew is not a NCAA sport, rather club, means women certainly have an edge in that particularl sport. It seems, across the board, women have a much better chance of being recruited (thanks title IX). Except for football of course, with their ridiculous amount of scholarships.</p>
<p>Volleyball is another sport, like crew, that has many more opportunities for women at the college level. Less than 25 men’s Division l programs (last l looked a few years ago) but hundreds of women’s programs.
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<p>Crew doesn’t have NCAA mens. Our team is co-ed and club so we get class credit, but no scholarship for it. We look at going div, but we would have had to drop the mens half of our team.</p>
<p>Interestingly, several colleges D considered had D1 crew while all the other sports were D3. This frees the college to offer scholarships if they want to for crew only.</p>
<p>I know someone whose kid was recruited for sailing. But it was at a need-only school, so no money involved. (Well, except the huge amount of money the parents spent enabling her to compete at the national level…)</p>
<p>Well, except the huge amount of money the parents spent enabling her to compete at the national level – Bingo. As they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.</p>
<p>Crew is extremely popular in Seattle & I imagine most places with waterways.
Competition is between the city parks & rec programs and private clubs, not high schools.</p>
<p>Rugby is also gaining popularity here as is ultimate frisbee.</p>
I wouldn’t call women’s crew an “unusual sport.” In terms of NCAA Div I participation, women’s crew has more athletes than all of the “common sports” you listed except for softball, which has a similar number of athletes. The only women’s sports with far more athletes in Div I than crew are track and soccer.</p>
<p>The other thing to remember with some of those sports is that not everyone on the team is getting a full scholarship or a scholarship at all. On a basketball team, every athlete, except maybe that one walk-on, is getting a full ride. On a rowing team, very few people are usually getting a full ride scholarship, some recruits start out with a few thousand, and some start out with nothing (both of those may be getting more money by their senior year than they were their freshman year).</p>
<p>My daughter has a friend from her graduating class (2013) who got a rowing scholarship to UPenn. Even schools that don’t technically give athletic scholarships have alums who will fund them.</p>