Getting a Division 1 (D1) offer seems like winning the lottery, but is it?
Collegiate sports are split into divisions, Division 3, 2 and 1. These divisions are similar to leagues at the high school level. Lincoln, for example, is a 6A league school because of its large size, compared to Wilsonville High School, which is slightly smaller and classified as a 5A school.
According to Collegevine, a free college guidance platform, The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) divides colleges participating in intercollegiate sports into three divisions.
Division 3 is “less demanding and intense than it would be at a D1 or D2 school. “Academics are just as important as athletics in a D3 school,” according to Next College Student Athlete (NCSA), a college athletic recruiting program,
D2 schools fall in the middle, while D1 schools are the most athletically competitive and are often the most competitive to get into.
Two Lincoln seniors have already committed to D1 schools.
Seniors Camden Schnebly committed to play D1 lacrosse at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), and Sophia Malinoski committed to run cross country and track & field at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
Both athletes say that students who get the opportunity to attend a D1 school in their sport generally put in a lot of time and effort.
“I worked hard and consistently over the past four years to improve my times by running 48 weeks a year, six days a week, which ultimately helped me get recruited my junior year,” said Malinoski.
Athletes say another important part of recruitment is attending different events to get noticed by college coaches.
“I probably did seven to nine events on the East Coast this past summer, and there’s one or two tournaments in the fall that I did,” said Schnebly.
Both Schnebly and Malinoski say the application process is less stressful. Once committed, there is only one school they need to apply to.
“For my application process I am very lucky to have only have to apply to one college and I think that that’s kind of gave me a lot more time to have it more easy balance between my athletic and academic responsibilities,” said Malinoski.
Although still maintaining a certain GPA is necessary to be able to go to these schools for athletics, the athletes that have committed to a school get directed through a slightly different admission process.
“I still have to complete the entire application just like anyone else would but it gets sent to an athlete portal where it’s not necessarily reviewed as a normal candidate because the grade requirements and extracurriculars would have to be a lot different if I were to want to get in,” said Schnebly.
Athletes say finding the school you want to play at and connecting with their coaches are the most important and difficult parts of the process.
“My timeline was I reached out to the coach last year in the fall and then he got back to me so I went on an unofficial visit, where I met him in person and then I later got invited to an official visit,” said Malinoski. “He also watched my progress throughout the track season so then he gave me an offer.”
Committing to a D1 school takes hard work and dedication, but according to Malinoski, “all of the hard work I put in was worth it.”
