The NCAA Division 2 is the smallest of the three NCAA Divisions. Division 2 colleges, like Division 1 schools, offer athletic scholarships. However, they do not offer as many scholarships in many sports and are not required to sponsor as many varsity teams as D1 programs. They also tend to offer more partial scholarships. However, since they aren’t required to offer headcount scholarships, you will often find D2 colleges actually sponsor more varsity teams than required.
50-50 Highlights: NCAA D2 Colleges
We’ve all seen the pictures in the local paper, high school seniors signing their National Letter of Intent (NLI) to play for a specific university or college. Sometimes there are proud parents in the pictures. Other times, you’ll see team colors or maybe a football. What you won’t see is a coach from the university the student is signing the NLI with.
Should you play more than one sport in high school if you want to play at the college level? Focusing on a single sport would seem to provide players with the ability to develop advanced skills to stand-out from the competition. However, there are plenty of people out there arguing that playing multiple sports provides athletes with significant benefits, including in the recruiting arena.
When is it too late? When do you know that you should give up on playing D1 and start looking elsewhere because you haven’t heard from any coaches? While there will always be those who say “never say never” right up to the moment they find themselves enrolling in whatever last minute college they could get into, the truth is that most athletes are willing to face reality and move on once they know when. The questions is when is “when?” Thanks to an NCAA Survey completed last fall, athletes have a better estimate of “when” for most sports.
