Author: Jack McHenry
College athletics at the Division III level are not officially allowed to give scholarships. In some cases, particularly at academically rigorous schools, it is a point of pride. The school gets to boast that fine athletes they field to compete in sports have to qualify like every other student and are often some of the institutions’ brightest young minds. More often than not, this is not simply a hollow sales pitch.
Many supporters of these colleges make the argument that because athletic scholarships cannot be offered, schools with larger enrollments and lower academic standards can attract athletic talent that might not be able to qualify at smaller, more rigorous institutions.
This position is often heard in the context of Occidental, and the SCIAC conference at large, where four very academic schools (Occidental, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, Pomona-Pitzer, Cal Tech) battle it out with five less selective schools (Whittier, La Verne, Cal Lutheran, Redlands, and now, Chapman). However, very quick Internet research dismisses this assumption as simply not true. Both in the SCIAC and nation-wide, premier academic institutions at the Division III level are able to field championship caliber teams on a regular basis. Instead of academic standards, conference structure and school enrollment, the real factors that allow for athletic success at the Division III level are an institutional commitment to athletics and, quite simply, money.
Contrary to assumptions that larger, less rigorous institutions like Cal Lutheran or Redlands are the most accomplished schools in terms of overall athletic achievement, CMS has had the most overall success in sports this season, and this has been the case for many past seasons as well. All three schools that form CMS’s athletic teams are all top notch liberal arts institutions, facing the same admission challenges as Occidental.
One clear difference is the funding that goes into athletics for CMS. There is just more money flying around between those three schools in terms of endowment and budget for athletics. Their tennis facility was valued at well over $10 million dollars when built and is a top notch facility for the perennial powerhouse tennis teams. The swimming and diving facilities are also excellent, and much like the tennis facilities, put their Occidental counterparts to shame. CMS has an institutional commitment to allocating money from its endowment to athletics, and that investment has a direct effect on the success of its teams.
Institutional commitment extends beyond just throwing money at facilities and hoping to attract great athletes. Certain institutions build around a culture of success that breeds more success, and on top of that, those institutions has a marked commitment to athletics.
Take east coast liberal arts colleges like Williams and Amherst. These schools perennially stand at the very top of the liberal arts college rankings. Whether or not they pulled a CMS and spent a lot of money to achieve those rankings is beside the point-these are well known, very well respected schools that select from an elite pool of students.
Williams and Amherst are also continuously very successful in athletics. Williams has won the NACDA Directors Cup, which is awarded to the school with the most overall success in athletics, for Division III 15 out of the 16 years the award has been in existence. Williams also ranks first in Division III for money spent per athlete.
Amherst, while not quite comparable with Williams, has finished in the top ten for the NACD directors cup seven times and has won multiple national championships over the last decade in sports including men’s and women’s basketball, women’s ice hockey and women’s lacrosse. Indeed, just as elite students are attracted to these schools, so are elite athletes.
In addition to the facilities, its emphasis on sports, the well-respected, efficiently run New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), creates a culture that both seeks out top tier athletes and attracts them on its own.
At Occidental, the admissions process does an excellent job of admitting a diverse class every year. There is a strong balance between academics, athletics and a variety of other student activities. This balance creates an awesome academic atmosphere, one that is conducive to growing as a scholar and a human being. But this is a sports column, and the overall administrative strategy of Occidental and lack of institutional priority given to the success of athletics means that sometimes
Occidental will have successful teams and sometimes it will not. But as the school continues to grow and become more selective in the admissions process, athletics will not be consistently successful at Occidental like they are at CMS or distant Williams and Amherst unless the college as an institution makes a conscious decision to prioritize athletics and integrate them into the fundamental, cultural fabric of the school.
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