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US Scholarship Chase - The truth about US scholarships!

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THE SCHOLARSHIP CHASE: Northern California soccer
Are goals really within reach?

Tom FitzGerald, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, October 30, 2005

The myth of the full ride seems in full swing on soccer fields across Northern California.

While thousands of excellent teenage players hone their skills, many of their parents are looking for the college soccer scholarship they think one or more of the six Division I schools in the Bay Area are sure to offer.

Folks, you might want to take a seat in one of those well-used lawn chairs and listen up: Your kid has a better shot at a perfect SAT score.

The money is not flowing, the full-ride scholarships are rare, and a player who doesn't keep up his or her high school grades won't be going anywhere, even if he or she can bend it like Beckham.

"A lot of people are delusional,' San Jose State women's coach Dave Siracusa said.

All 12 Bay Area Division I coaches agree there's a widespread misconception of how much financial aid is available. They also agree there's too much emphasis on soccer scholarships among players and their families.

"That's not what they should be focusing on,' Cal women's coach Kevin Boyd said. "They should be focusing on being the best player they can be and then finding the school that fits them the best.'

"Sometimes a family doesn't even need the assistance,' St. Mary's women's coach Paul Sapsford said. "It's a matter of status, to tell friends their son or daughter has gotten an athletic scholarship. In my opinion, there's not enough emphasis on going to university to improve yourself mentally. Society is leaning too much toward athletic achievement and not enough toward intellectual achievement.'

Coaches at other local universities say players should pick their school regardless of whether they are offered aid as freshmen. But the idea of defraying the staggering costs of college while staying close to home is tantalizing to many players and their parents. Unfortunately for them, it's a pipe dream for all but a handful of elite Northern California players.

"There are a lot of unrealistic expectations out there,' USF men's coach Erik Visser said. "There are a lot of good players, but how many opportunities are there? In Division I we may have four or five (new) spots a year on our team. There are 9.9 scholarships (the NCAA limit) for 24-26 athletes. The numbers don't add up."

The women's teams have 12 scholarships a year. As with the men, few players get a full ride.

While basketball -- a bigger money-maker -- offers 13 full scholarships, soccer is considered an "equivalency' sport by the NCAA. That means the pie is divided among most of the players, except for the walk-ons, who get nothing at all. That puts coaches in the uncomfortable position of being payroll clerks.

Very few players receive full scholarships for four years. Jerry Smith, coach of Santa Clara's highly successful women's program, tries to reward seniors with full scholarships. For the first three years, however, those players and their parents had to pay the school's annual costs (currently $42,000) with partial or no financial aid.

To land a full ride as a freshman, a player practically has to be of national caliber, a player who is coveted by several schools because of his or her singular skills.

Neither the Cal men's team nor the women's team has a player on a full scholarship, which would be $21,000 a year.

"All our kids are on partials,' men's coach Kevin Grimes said. "Sometimes it's as little as $400-$500 a year, something for the kids we recruit to show some commitment on our part.'

At San Jose State, typically about a dozen men get nothing as freshmen. "Then they get some form of scholarship, based on their performance,' men's coach Gary St. Clair said. "Once you're here at college, it's play for pay.'

The competition for the few spots on Bay Area rosters gets more intense each year.

"We're looking for difference makers," USF's Visser said, "players who can help us compete at the national level, versus players who are good but won't help you get to the next level."

Only five of his 30 players are from Northern California. Half the team is from Southern California, and another five players are from Arizona.

"Southern California is a very attractive recruiting area," Visser said, "because of the climate, a lot of fields and a lot of clubs that play demanding competition day in and day out. The players are seasoned by the time they come to college."

The odds against Northern Californians are even steeper at Stanford, which has just two NorCal players on the men's team and four on the women's.

For that matter, there's only one player from elsewhere in the state on the men's team, a strange fact considering that California, according to Stanford men's coach Bret Simon, "without a doubt has the most talent of any state in the country.'

Stanford's rigorous academic requirements are only part of the explanation. According to Simon, many outstanding players who might otherwise qualify for the Farm shun advanced-placement courses in high school because of their travels on club teams and because they don't want to sully their A averages.

"They're fearful of getting B's and C's; they'd rather get A's in courses that are not demanding,' Simon said.

That might help them get into other schools, but not Stanford.

The Bay Area has some of the best college soccer in the country. The Santa Clara women won the national title in 2001 and are the only team that has reached at least the NCAA quarterfinals in each of the last 10 years. This year's Broncos are ranked fifth nationally, Cal 10th and Stanford 25th. Among the men, Santa Clara is tied for eighth, Cal 12th.

Certainly there are opportunities outside the Bay Area and in other states for high school soccer stars. Across the country, however, more and more elite players are hunting for scholarships.

There are tens of thousands of girls on under-17 or under-18 competitive teams. The NCAA lists 301 women's teams in Division I. If every team takes a half-dozen players each year, those 1,800 players represent a small percentage of the talent pool. And most of them will be non-scholarship players as freshmen.

For the men, the odds are worse. There are just 199 Division I teams.

"Only about 100 of them are fully funded (to offer 9.9 scholarships),' Santa Clara men's coach Cameron Rast said. "The others might offer five scholarships. There are 5,000 student-athletes trying for 1,500 scholarships in a year when there are 100,000 senior players coming out of high school. The percentages are low.'

(The smaller Division II schools also offer scholarships. The NCAA limits the 213 women's teams to 9.9 scholarships, the 159 men's teams to 9. Many of those programs are not fully funded. Division III schools do not award athletic scholarships.)

The scholarship pressure is felt most intensely on the teams of clubs like the high-powered Pleasanton Rage, an army of 2,500 girls on 160 age-group teams. Rage teams have won a couple of national championships, and 22 members of last year's under-18 and under-17 teams went on to play at Division I universities.

"The first thing I tell kids has nothing to do with soccer,' said Philippe Blin, the club's technical director. "If you don't have good grades, you won't be playing in college. You'll be in junior college. And don't expect to get a scholarship your first year."

The intensity doesn't necessarily let up after a player and a college embrace each other. Alicia Jenkins, a senior at Union Mine High School in El Dorado, which is 40 miles northeast of Sacramento, left her local club in June to play for the Rage because she felt it would better prepare her for college. She has already committed to Stanford, but she commutes 2.5 hours each way for practice two or three times a week in Pleasanton, picking up a couple of teammates from Sacramento along the way.

"We find interesting ways to sleep in a Honda Civic,' she said. "I leave at 1:30 and don't get home till 10.'

Why do it?

"My goal is hopefully to start when I'm a freshman.'