College Volleyball Scholarships In The USA

You Can Get A Volleyball Scholarship Right Now!

Volleyball scholarships are available to both men and women in large numbers in NCAA and NAIA colleges in the United States. This is due to the fact that since it’s a relatively inexpensive college sport, almost every college can afford to have a team.

The problem however, is that since it is such an inexpensive sport, almost every high school in North America has a male and female volleyball team. This means that you have to beat out an almost unimaginable number of other athletes for college sports scholarships in volleyball.

This article will discuss college sports scholarships for volleyball, their benefits to you and how you can best equip yourself to receive the top volleyball scholarships.

So do you play volleyball? Are you a high school senior who is trying to decide which colleges to apply to? Have you considered applying for a volleyball scholarship yet?

"First Things First"

The first thing to discuss is why you should consider applying for a scholarship. The main benefit everyone thinks about is the financial assistance towards the costs of college – but there are several benefits you will get from just undertaking the application process.

Receiving a college sports scholarship will definitely assist you financially, you will have the advantage of having some or all of the costs of college education paid for you so you will not have to worry about student loans and other financial burdens.

You will also develop several skills through the application process that will continue to serve you well throughout your life such as prioritizing and organizing skills, you will learn how to effectively communicate in writing, how to promote yourself and how to target your communications to a particular audience.

All of these skills will stand you in good stead throughout your life especially in your working life.

It is possible to get a volleyball scholarship and you should work towards this goal; but your preparation has to start long before the application process – you have to ensure you have good grades in high school.

First, you have to have at least the minimum marks required to enter college; even the best player in the world won't get in if they don't have the marks!

You cannot coast along on the strength of your game and hope to get into college and receive a scholarship; you must remember that in most colleges you will not even be able to play on the team if your marks are too low!

Athletic programs can be penalized if the students grades are not high enough, they can actually lose scholarships!

Good marks may work to your benefit in another way, the volleyball coach will be working with the financial aid department of the college and they will assess your marks and circumstances to see if you qualify for any other forms of aid or other scholarships.

You have to remember that there are many more academic scholarships available than sporting ones and if you can get academic aid this will not come out of the athletic departments budget – a desirable advantage from their point of view.

While it is possible to get a scholarship by doing the work by yourself, it's not very practical.

However, if you really want to take on this monumental task yourself, here are a few pointers.

First, when you are actually applying for college volleyball scholarships make sure you contact every single coach directly. There are hundreds of cases each year of colleges not allocating all of their available volleyball scholarships because they did not find suitable applicants or any applicants at all!

You cannot sit back and assume that if you are good enough they will come to you.

If you are exceptionally talented you will most likely receive offers but this rule only applies to less than 1% of all high school volleyball players. If you aren't in the top 1% of the best volleyball players in North American then you need to take the initiative and let the schools know about you.

Next you need to write and email each and every college volleyball coach advising them of your availability and qualifications. In your letter and email you will want to include both your volleyball statistics and information such as the positions you play, the clubs you play with and your experience, your standing reach, your approach jump height, and your jump touch height.

This letter should also, of course include your personal details such as information about yourself, your hobbies and interests, any other sports you play, any awards you have won, details of your references and especially your GPA.

You really must make a DVD or video presentation that will show the coaches the skills you have to bring to their team. However, you need to make 2 of them. One should be a maximum of 5 minutes long showing only brief skills or plays during a number of different games.

Send this DVD to every school you wish to apply to. The video should feature your skills individually and also show your performance in a game.

College volleyball coaches don't have the time to look at hours of video belonging to each of the thousands of athletes that contact them every year. If the coach is interested he or she may request a DVD of at least one full game. This is the second DVD you need to make.

Remember to show all of the variations of a particular skill for example show that you can serve to different areas of the court, can jump serve, can perform floater serves etc. (If you have a particular skill that you do not do so well in it may be preferable not to show that one skill.)

Introduce yourself on the video and remember to include your contact details. Finally do not include too much in the way of fancy graphics and music etc in your video allow the coach to focus on what is important – your skills and game play.

Volleyball scholarships and their availability differ between the sexes; mens volleyball is known as an equivalency sport – this means that the available volleyball scholarships can be divided and given to a larger group of players as partial volleyball scholarships.

Womens volleyball on the other hand is known as a head count sport in which specific numbers of full volleyball scholarships are set to be allocated.

In division one 12 full volleyball scholarships are awarded per college and 8 per college in division 2, the NAIA allows 12. The NCAA has set their numbers at 4.5 for men and 12 for women in division 1, and 4.5 for men and 8 for women in division 2.

The entire process of applying for volleyball scholarships can be confusing, especially if you are trying to deal with the rules and regulations of the NAIA and NCAA.

"Getting The Help You Need"

There are resources that can help, there are specialist college sports scholarship recruiting agencies available although you should be careful and ensure that the agency is reputable.

There are also several websites that offer advice and assistance with the scholarship process in general and even sites that offer specific advice on volleyball scholarships.

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