There will probably be some scholarships available at that time at some schools. Currently you have a bunch of schools looking at each other waiting to see which will be the first to transition from club team to an actual NCAA team, give scholarships etc.

Everyone is on the dock no one is jumping in right now.

Brooks Doughtie on here can probably give you more info in depth

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Interested in this as well. Tons of obstacles, not the least of which is weather. I just don't know how you get around the fact that there is very little outdoor riding/swimming until May at many schools (Michigan, Ohio State). That's a huge hit to participation levels right away. The PAC 10(I don't know what they call it now) SEC and Texas schools (I don't know what that conference is called either, Big 12?) would be ok.
Well, as I am typing, I guess you could hold large races at the Southern/ Western venues from late March on and you could have some early/early fall races as well. Problem solved!
Lot of trainer time and travel for the Wolverines but they are tough!

It would need to continually be a fall sport for competition, and you can construct your own conferences that make sense for the schools involved. There is nothing about the winter that prevents training and nothing about the fall that would prevent competition. Yes there would be some cold days training and some not perfect weather for racing, but that's the nature of the sport. College sailing is in the water in February across the country (Including Massachusetts), while they are not literally in the water, they are braving the weather like triathlon will end up having to do.

There's probably some incorrect assumptions out there about scholarships (i.e. schools offer full rides for all sports). This is far from the case. Depending upon which Division (I, II or III) a school operates in (& which sport), scholarships may or may not be offered at all OR be partial in nature. I'd suspect that women's triathlon will get some fee waivers & such at schools offering the sport (and $0 at DIII for athletic ability). If you look at the so-called "Olympic sports" a full ride scholarship may be broken up into several partials.

At the DII (level, where I was a student-athlete long ago), I can envision a scenario where an institution would offer a few fee waivers and that's it. Kids want to play & finding walk ons will not be a problem. A roster can easily be filled without having to offer much in scholarship money.

As an aside (& probably high jacking the thread), if I were a head coach at a DI school that had resources for women's triathlon, & pressure to win, I seriously look at recruiting women from Australia and New Zealand. Those countries are way ahead of the USA with youth learning how to race draft legal races. The learning curve, in terms of sport-specific skill sets, is much lower. I'd look at recruiting NZ women who have already graduated from college (in NZ a university degree takes only 3 years), get them to become graduate students and still have (potentially/probably) 2 more years of NCAA eligibility.

Good luck.

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

LazyEP - Women's scholarship could happen with reasonable numbers at big programs looking to offset mens football scholarships as a result of title IX.

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Superfly Coaching
http://www.superflycoaching.com/eric

IL PIRATA VI GUARDA

A few notes on this subject...

• The only scholarship I know of for fall of 2015 (and I'm involved in this pretty deeply) is Sonni Dyer at Queens University in Charlotte, NC
• A nod has to be given to Zane Castro at Marymount in VA because he's been recruiting male and female triathletes to a funded program at his school but that started before NCAA gave this recent go-ahead.
• The Elite Triathlon Academy took in two athletes for fall of 2014 Dillon Nobbs (from my Junior High Performance Team) and Katie Gorczyca (from Sharon Osgood's squad) but they will not take on a new athlete for fall of 2015.
• There are still opportunities for a great high school triathlete to go to school on a single sport scholarship with the understanding that they'll be allow to train at two other sports while fulfilling their commitment. Tony Smoragiewicz running for Michigan is a good example. Hannah Rae Finchamp at Linenwood is another.

I had a strong discussion with Slowman on the subject of...why it's better/worse for a young triathlete to go to college as a single sporter who is permitted to do two other sports vs. a 4 year commitment to S/B/R team. I still think we (the US Olympic triathlon mission) needs to complete the pipeline: we have pretty good youth and junior development, we have some systems in place for senior elite support but we need to bridge those two with college based draft legal triathlon programs and I think in 4-5 years we'll have 70 scholarship opportunities at 25 schools across the nation.

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

Careful...it's not all about scholarships to offset football. Title IX uses the 3-prong test. Simply offering opportunities meets one of the three prongs. The NCAA establishes the MAXIMUM of full rides per sport (@ the DI & DII levels). A school could choose to not offer the maximums.

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

One of my fears for triathlon as an NCAA sport is that the talent is going to be diluted rather than concentrated in a way that can help build this part of the elite development pipeline.

If you were to rank the top female triathletes in the college-aged bracket from 1-70, there would be a HUGE gap between first and 70th (for perspective, the difference between 1st and 70th at collegiate nationals last year was 18 minutes). I just don't see a large number of schools having sufficient funding to attract, say, the 3rd and 4th ranked girls, as well as girls ranked 15th and 20th to build a competitive team that is capable of doing similar workouts at similar intensities. Instead, a team may attract a top ranked athlete with a large scholarship but then give smaller scholarships to girls who finish 10-15 minutes back. The result will be a dilution of talent between the schools that do have triathlon programs, and to me that doesn't help the top athletes develop in a way that prepares them to race ITU.

My other concern is that many parents and athletes at the youth/junior elite level seem to have some misconstrued ideas regarding triathlon as an NCAA sport. There will be no such thing as a full ride scholarship for triathlon! They are much more likely to receive an academic scholarship if they work toward it.

As I stated earlier...recruit internationally. Is there an assumption that coaches & schools will recruit just US women? Coaches need to win, graduate students & avoid scandals. If international student-athletes can do that (& meet the NCAA Clearing House requirements) then why not?

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

Obviously hundreds of athletes close to level of D 1 hoops girls will never happen. But I don't have a problem with a big dilution. Years ago I'm sure the gap in women's XC and track was big. Like top girl at a top school doing 16 minute 5k and the number 5 girl that can't do 18. But over time it can evolve & improve. I think very few girls & parents are pinning hopes on scholarships. But I do know a few who are hoping to compete somewhere someday.

They already have to do that with their current sports...adding a sport won't magically mean they have more schollys to give out

Thx for the info guys...

bump this up...

any news???

USA Triathlon provided eight schools with grants for 2015-16 (and through '17-18):
http://www.usatriathlon.org/about-multisport/ncaa/institution-list.aspx


More grant opportunities still exist for schools looking to add W's Triathlon, over the next few years.

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John Hartpence, Athlete & Coach
tripence@gmail.com, @coachpence