I want to play volleyball in college and most of the colleges looking at me are d3 schools but the only problem is that they don’t give money for sports and I want money for sports. I want to play at a d1 or d2 because I love the sport and most of the colleges I am looking at have my major and they are d1 or d2. I have heard athletes say that playing d1 is like having a job and no life. But I want to know if that is true.
It can be. If you are female, volleyball is a head count sport and so the coaches demand a lot. If male or D2 for female, it will really depend on the coach and how good the team is, but it is a lot of work. During the season, you will have practice for about 20 hours per week, but that doesn’t include games, travel, pre-practice taping or post practice icing. It doesn’t include meetings, and watching film. It’s a lot, but most athletes like it.
It can be the same at a D3. Again depends on the level of play and the coach. During the season, you’ll have little free time but your team will do a lot of social things.
There is an adage about D1 sports – there are three things in college: academics, your sport, social life. You can do 2.
I played D1 volleyball for a small private university. My niece played D1 for a pac12 school. Our experiences were similar in some ways & different in others. Weight room training began at 6:30am. Then class till early afternoon. Practice was 3.5-4 hours per day, trainer for another 30min-hr per day. We practiced 3-4 hrs per day & weight room/conditioning during the off season. Then dinner, then hangout/study. On my campus there was a mandatory study hall for all athletes one night out of the week. My niece had two. Plus attending team meetings, film meetings, game day prep, away games, etc. For me, I became miserable as I began to feel owned by the university…My coach refusing my request to attend summer school because I would miss a couple of days of our fundraising summer camp…didn’t help. Switching gears: All was going well for my niece, until after her first season ended, and her head coach was fired due to the team underperforming. Then she got a new head coach who held a team meeting and removed 90% of the girls because he had recruited his own players. My niece was in the top 100 D1 Freshman in the country and because this coach didn’t know/recruit her, she was released. Luckily she got picked up by another Pac12 team and graduated last year and from all accounts had a very positive experience. My point is D1 can be highly competitive and decisions are made that may not put the athlete first. But, programs do differ. So it is very important that while coaches are recruiting you…make sure to do your research into the coach, his/her program & reputation, the team’s record, avg #years players play for the team (not good if there are 4 upperclassmen and 12 Frosh), the school’s academics/environment, etc.
One story that has always stuck with me in my sports career is the following: Many moons ago, I was a D1 Mid-Major, non-scholarship, but recruited athlete - it was not a head count sport. I retired after my sophomore year so I could study abroad. I left on great terms. One night I was talking with a teammate about me retiring. We never talked about $ then - no one cared, no one got in to anyone’s business, but that night I learned she was on scholarship. That night she told me, “God, I wish I was you”. And I’m thinking, she’s an Olympic Trials qualifier. Seriously? When I asked why she said, “I need this money in order to attend school here. I’m like a puppet on a string”. She was owned, and couldn’t leave on her own terms like I could. I look back now and see how much more I appreciate that experience especially for it being able to end naturally. Scholarship money is nice - don’t get me wrong - but you are definitely owned. I loved my time as a D1 athlete: I’m still friends with my teammates, my coach was integral in getting me a job my senior year, and I have many wonderful memories. But as with lots of things, it was a lot of work and sacrifice.
But scholarship money can also give you the opportunity to attend a school you otherwise couldn’t afford. My daughter is is in that position. She could have attended many other schools for much less, but she wanted THIS school, and she couldn’t afford it without the athletic money (and merit money, and a few other grants). She’s known that from the beginning, that she could quit playing but then she’d probably have to transfer to a less expensive school. Same is true if she lost her merit scholarship, if her gpa fell below the requirement. Finances are an issue whether you are an athlete or a pianist or a scientist - you have to figure out how to pay for the school. She would have been very happy at the flagships for much less money. She might have even liked the academics more at the flagships or other publics, and certainly would have like the social life more, but she couldn’t play at those schools either because they don’t offer her sport or because it is at a much higher level (top, TOP, teams).
She has moaned and groaned about the coach, her teammates, the trainer, the team building from the beginning. She kept saying she wanted to quit, and this year (her senior) I finally called her on it, said to quit if she wanted to and we’d find the money for her to finish at that school. She was shocked that I said that! Quit? She was only kidding (although she said it a dozen times). Of course she was going to finish playing her final year, was I crazy?
youi won’t have any time for anything besides academics and your sport
That isn’t true. My daughter is in a sorority and several clubs related to her engineering major. She goes to the beach a lot with her friends and to a few concerts, and every Sunday she has a football watching party with her boyfriend and his friends. She’s not much of a shopper but her teammates who are go on shopping trips to bigger cities in the area. She doesn’t go away on a lot of weekend trips, but that has more to do with money than anything else.
Several of her teammates have jobs during the school year, but my daughter is lucky enough not to have to work. If she did, those 10-15 hours per week would impact her social life more than academics or athletics.
Possibly a slight exaggeration, but during the season, it’s reasonably accurate to be focusing on your studies and your sport nearly all your waking hours. This is the experience of someone that I know that currently plays D1 and made an all-academic team. But that isn’t to say you can’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend or can’t go out occasionally with friends or attend other sporting events during your sport’s season.
Are you good enough to be recruited and offered an athletic scholarship by D1 schools? The bar will be significantly higher for a recruited scholarship D! athlete than a non-scholarship D3 program (and I recognize that you have to be outstanding to get a D3 offer).
@Midwestmomofboys that’s funny as that’s the exact same line my son’s HS crew coach told my son when he was in school.
@happy1, don’t want to go in circles about this, but a D3 runner from JHU, and other similar D3 programs, would be eligible for a D1 scholarship at many, many schools - for some that are fortunate to not need a scholarship academics prevails.
@Chembiodad I agree (and I also have no need to go in circles about this) that some people would very reasonably choose D3 athletics over D1, especially if finances are not an issue. If one does not plan to make a career out of a sport then having a chance to play at a varsity collegiate level with potentially with more playing time and a bit less practice time/intensity (understanding any varsity sport at any collegiate level would be demanding in terms of both time and effort) can make D3 athletics a very attractive option.
In this case the OP has indicated that he/she would like an athletic scholarship and that no D1 schools have looked at him/her to date. I do know a number of D3 athletes who were not recruited for D1 athletic scholarships in sports such as football, women’s basketball, soccer, and swimming. I have no idea what the landscape is like for volleyball hence I posed the question for the OP to consider.
@happy1, I hope none of those that are playing D1, D2 or D3 sports is planning on making a career out of it as the likelihood of achieving that outcome is slim.
@LondonParis1, what year are you in as D1 coaches have likely already finalized their list for 2018, and D3 coaches are doing so this month? Have you talked to any Patriot League coaches as they are D1?
OP never answered if we are talking about men’s or women’s volleyball. They are very different at women’s is a headcount sport so that’s a lot of money for a D1 school. D2 schools do not have to give the full scholarships but many do give some big money.
I’m not getting these comments that the academics are going to prevail at D3 schools. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big LAC fan, but there are lots of D1 schools with outstanding academics. Stanford, Notre Dame, Duke, Colgate, UVA, Wake Forest, William &Mary, not to mention the Ivies- the list goes on and on
@wisteria100, absolutely agree that there are plenty of top-20 D1 schools - all #1-20 USWR University! That said, if OP was in the hunt for those schools, the coaches would be swarming.
Here’s your answer:
I used to know someone who had a “free” ride (free in a money sense, definitely not in an overall sense) to a well known D1 school as a football lineman. At one point I asked him if he had ever used performance enhancing drugs. He said that they all did all the time.
I have no idea whether this is true in other sports. It is only one person’s word for one team in one sport. Certainly volleyball is a sport where technique and practice and skill matter a lot. However, I would be very careful about any D1 college level sport. Those performance enhancing drugs do improve performance, but they are also very unhealthy in many ways.
I know it is a gross generality, but if you are worried about a sport being too consuming, you probably should not be considering D1. At this level of competition, the athletes that are still competing are those that are doing it not only for what little, if any, scholarship money they get, but are the athletes that couldn’t imagine not being part of their sport for 4 more years. These athletes don’t mind giving up other things because continuing to compete IS their priority.
Yes, there are all types of exceptions at D3 and D1 schools, but in general at the D1 level, athletes are willingly prioritizing sports over everything else and if you don’t have that level of passion for the sport it may be difficult to enjoy the college experience. It isn’t that you have no life at a D1, it is more that the sport IS your life, and you need to be excited about that, not dreading it.