A number of colleges and other institutions offer Baseball scholarships to attract a good team to play for them. There are numerous such scholarships, and all you need to do is get noticed by the college coaches who come scouting every year. Being at the top of your game is not the most important thing. Most coaches also look for a minimum GPA level, which they need to grant the scholarship. Understanding that you need to excel in both sports and academics is important to get selected in a baseball scholarship program.
Here are a number of college baseball scholarships that high school baseball players can look forward to.
1. NCAA: The NCAA is one of the best college baseball scholarships available to students, who were the best in high school and probably got a high school baseball scholarship. The NCAA, every year, sponsors almost 900 college baseball scholarship programs for Div I and Div II teams. It awards athletic scholarship to students who are amongst the best in their high school baseball team. To be eligible for this scholarship, a student needs to be in the top 5% of his high school baseball team for the coach to even notice him. The coaches are allowed 9 scholarships for a Div II school, while they can award 11.5 scholarships to a Div I school. The coaches may even break the baseball scholarship to award partial scholarships to each of their players.
2. NJCAA: The NJCAA allows almost 24 high school baseball scholarships. This offers a full tuition waiver to students who qualify for it, but may also offer partial baseball scholarships to students in need. There are almost 184 Div I colleges and 128 Div II colleges that offer college baseball scholarships. Each of these colleges can offer a maximum of 24 scholarships to students. To be eligible for this scholarship, the student has to fight a tough competition from his peers in high school and community. The baseball scholarships also cover the books and tuition cost.
3. NAIA: The NAIA offers college baseball scholarships for community and junior colleges. However, it offers much lesser baseball scholarships than NCAA. The NAIA supports partial funding to top athletes but has very stringent rules. This means that the applicant must be a good student and also a good athlete to receive this scholarship.
4. JUCO level Scholarships: To get selected in the JUCO level baseball scholarships, the students need to contact individual baseball coaches and talk to them about what they can offer to their baseball program.
5. NJCAA for Junior Colleges: This baseball scholarship program is associated with junior colleges and allows the athlete to study in the college and play baseball for two years. The athlete is required to contact individual coaches of each college to obtain the baseball scholarship.
The most important thing for an athlete to realize to gain a college baseball scholarship is that he needs to also keep his high school GPA at a good level. Most colleges, including community and state colleges, often require a minimum academic qualification for admission.
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