College scholarships few for high school tennis stars

Source: The Star

1 of 2

MARK SCHIEFELBEIN | SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Taj Harrison won state titles at Rockhurst and Bishop Miege but couldn’t win a Division I scholarship.

more boys tennis...

you might also like...

Taj Harrison had an impressive high school tennis career. He won two doubles state titles and two team championships in Missouri at Rockhurst. Last spring, he won a Kansas state singles championship as a senior at Bishop Miege.

He built a stellar resume to say the least. And yet, when it came time to pondering college scholarship offers … well, good opportunities were slim and none.

“I visited Wichita State and had a good visit,” Harrison said. “But it didn’t work out. And that was about it as far as visits.”

Harrison, who wound up at Johnson County Community College, isn’t alone. All throughout the United States, there are high school tennis state champions who don’t even get a sniff of college scholarship money, especially at the NCAA men’s Division I level.

“It’s tough,” said Mike Wolf, a former Big Eight Conference tennis champion while at Kansas, who now operates a junior tennis academy in the Kansas City area. “You have some of the country’s top players not getting scholarships. You need to be a full-time national player to get in there (for a scholarship).

“I can think of top-30 or 40 players who went on to become college All-Americans and never got more than 30 percent of a scholarship.”

Simply put, it comes down to numbers.

First, there are fewer men’s programs throughout the country than ever. To become compliant with Title IX laws requiring equality of scholarship opportunities for female student-athletes, many universities cut men’s programs, and tennis was an area hard hit. A prime example in these parts is that Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri all have no men’s tennis program.

Numbers compiled by collegesportsscholarships.com show that there are 274 men’s Division I programs compared with 316 women’s. In NCAA Division II, there are 164 men’s programs compared with 211 women’s.

And then, there are the number of scholarships offered at men’s Division I programs. The maximum number of scholarships men’s programs can offer under NCAA rules is 4.5. Those can be divided up in any number of ways, which is what Wolf was referring to earlier when he talked about players getting 30 percent of a full scholarship.

A typical major-college tennis roster consists of 12 players. So it’s quite rare when any player on any team receives a full ride, at least at first.

Overall, there are 1,971 Division I men’s scholarships available compared with 3,794 women’s.

“I was pretty fortunate in that regard,” said Evan Clark, a former Missouri singles state champion from Liberty who received a full ride to UMKC. “Those other fulls just weren’t coming from a lot of other places. There aren’t many out there.”

After two years at UMKC, Clark, who now works as director of junior competition and development at the USTA/Missouri Valley in Overland Park, decided he wanted to play at a higher-profile program. He walked on at Arkansas.

“Our No. 1 guy was top 10 in the country,” Clark said. “I don’t believe he started on a full. He might have worked his way up to one.”

Making those scholarships even rarer is the ever-growing influx of international players coming to this country to compete and get an education. Most programs throughout the country have at least one foreign player on the roster. Many have several more.

For example, Northwest Missouri State coach Mark Rosewell said his men’s team is currently split about 50-50 between American and international players.

“We’re always going to have some Missouri kids on the team,” Rosewell said. “We’re a regional school.

“But you have to have some international kids to compete. That’s just the way it is.”

That’s also true at two-year schools like Johnson County.

“Even in junior college, I can’t remember the last American player I played against,” Harrison said.

Finally, there’s also the fact that college coaches and recruiters pay much more attention to U.S. Tennis Association national and sectional competition, which occurs year-round, as opposed to watching high school matches.

“The only time I ever saw a (college) coach was at state, and there weren’t very many,” Clark said.

Longtime Pembroke Hill tennis coach Dale Eshelbrenner said: “I’ve coached 18 years and had several kids go on to Division I tennis. But in all those years, I’ve had zero Division I coaches call me to ask about a kid.”

And, Harrison added, “The problem, I thought, wasn’t getting the scholarship. The problem was actually having the financial means to get out there and play the tournaments to get seen.”

According to Wolf, you’d better have a national ranking in the top 50, certainly in the top 100, to have a decent chance at even a partial Division I scholarship.

Harrison said his highest national singles ranking hovered around 215 when he was in boys 16s. His doubles ranking got as high as 35.

But, despite the hardships, Harrison considers himself fortunate.

In the end, he did receive a full-ride at Johnson County Community College. He’s currently the No. 1 singles player for the Cavaliers as a freshman and hopes by the end of next season to have earned enough interest from Division I recruiters to warrant a scholarship offer.

“It’s been one of my main tennis goals to get a scholarship at a big-time Division I program,” said Harrison, 19, who hopes to pursue a degree someday in computer engineering. “That dream has definitely not gone away.”

•Shawnee Mission East is on the verge of a Kansas 6A state high school tennis title. | D8

submitted by BOB LUDER - 2008-05-09 22:52:02