Is height a major factor in playing college sports or is skill taken over height?
For being a college level jockey height matters.
May help to provide context sport wise and athletic division. At elite Div 1 it is all of the above.
Definitely depends on the sport and the athletic divisions but, in general, yes.
There are times when a defender is 6-8" taller than the attacker trying to score, and it matters. There are times when that 3" wingspan advantage really is an advantage. There are times when the 5’2 runner is taking 7 steps for every 6 that the taller runner is taking.
Yes, size matters.
Depends on the level and the sport, like others have said. My DD is a 5’4" shooting guard (basketball). She has a D1 skill set/basketball IQ trapped in a D3 body. If she had blazing speed and was a point guard, she’d be playing high D1. But she has respectable speed and an elite shooting ability, and that landed her in D3. She had D1 and D2 looks coming out of HS, and every one of those coaches told us the same thing–she needed to be 6-8" taller in order to defend her position. One mid-major D1 coach told us she could play low D1, in his opinion.We decided not to pursue low D1 and went with D3. Even at that level, she is by far the smallest on her team. Her skill set offsets her size there.
Depends . . . . soccer is a sport where skill can trump size, though part of the step up to college game is adjusting to being tackled by guys who are 6 ft and 180. Maybe a 5’6 135 guy can avoid those tackles most of the time, but it’s still going to happen sometimes and it can take its toll. If soccer is one of the sports on the table, look at rosters for schools of interest. If every player is over 6ft, and the prospect is 5’6, probably not a good fit. If a team has a range of heights, particularly with some midfielders who are smaller and presumably nimble, then absolutely, can work.
Depends on the sport, but in general, yes.
The way it was put to me was that “a small man(woman) has to prove they can play, a big man(woman) has to prove they can’t play.”
Had a friend last year who had been a top baseball player since little league. He wrestled as a winter sport but never focused on it, and he was fast better at baseball. But he’s maybe 5’4" or 5’5". Couldn’t spark any college interest. Ended up on a nice wrestling scholarship in D2 (which are had to come by). I don’t know details, but Dad said they had been focusing for years on baseball but just couldn’t get any traction there so summer before senior year switched to a sport that needs alerted of all sizes.
Yes, height is a major factor for D1. It can be overlooked for D3 if the skill is there.
Look at the rosters of the teams you are thinking about. What is the trend for height? There might be an outlier, but if the majority of the team is 5’8" or 6’, you can assume that’s what they are looking for.
You need to realize that as the competitive level improves weaknesses/mismatches become easier to exploit. Like @twoinandone says, it is not really purely a question of height, but often things like stride length, mass, or wing span (football coaches call it the circle, meaning the amount of area a player can effect), An athlete whose skill can allow him or her to overcome a disadvantage in mass/height/reach whatever in high school by just being better likely will struggle doing the same when playing against similarly skilled players in college. I think this is particularly true because a lot of undersized kids who are good athletes get by in high school exploiting technical weaknesses in their opponents. Those weaknesses tend to narrow as athletes are exposed to better coaching/more repetition in college.
Another point to consider is that a college coach is not just recruiting the athlete that exists, but the athlete that will appear after two/three years of rigorous conditioning/nutrition/weight training. So while a 5’10" offensive lineman might be just as good as a 6’3" teammate in high school, the larger player will likely be better three or four years down the road because he has a frame that will allow him to become stronger over time.