Taking Care of Business Off the Field!

Preparation for your on-the-field endeavors are important when trying to get noticed by college scouts and recruiters. Focusing on the physical aspects of your game can get your foot in the door of hundreds of schools, but what about the “back-office” stuff? Your performance on-the-field is only part of the game plan when it comes to your overall college transition. Making sure you have your academic requirements met and your paperwork completed is the other half of the process.

NCAA acceptance regulations are there for a reason. They’re there to ensure that you are enrolling to become a student-athlete, with an emphasis on the former (that being the “student” part)! In order to compete at the D-I level; you must reach certain GPA and ACT/SAT requirements.

NCAA Division-I Requirements (2007 – 2008):
- Earn a minimum grade-point average for the required 14 core courses
- Earn a combined SAT/ACT sum score that matches your core course grade-point average.

An example of this: a 2.400 core-course grade-point average needs an 860 SAT score or a 71 ACT score to qualify. The entire sliding scale can be found on the NCAA website (ncaa.org). It’s important to note that these SAT and ACT tests are only offered sparingly throughout the year. It’s wise to think ahead and take these tests during your junior year, in case you didn’t reach the test scores needed to satisfy the NCAA requirements the first time around.

The other item you’ll need to anticipate on is the NCAA Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse registration. The clearinghouse evaluates your academic record to determine if you are eligible to participate at a Division I or II college as a freshman student-athlete. (The clearinghouse is not the NCAA, but an organization that performs academic evaluations for the NCAA.) At the beginning of your junior year, you must register online at www.ncaaclearinghouse.net and then send a $50.00 registration fee to the NCAA Clearinghouse for processing.

Taking care of business off of the field will get you one step closer to making the college transition a smooth one and alleviates the burden of last minute formalities.