Courtesy of Elizabeth Wickham

When my kids were little and new to our swim team, we never thought about college scholarships. After all, we didn’t know if our kids would stick through one season of swimming, let alone 10 plus years of it. I remember parents of older kids who were very focused on scholarships and believed that swimming was their ticket for a paid for college education. I can report that these parents did send their kids to college with big scholarships and it worked out well for them.

However, from reading various articles and looking at statistics, the numbers are not in favor of getting college paid for by swimming or diving. It’s around 2 percent of all high school athletes who go on to play their sport at an NCAA D1 college and 7 percent for student-athletes across all divisions. And that’s not even talking about scholarships. There’s a website that a swim coach sent to me with lots of numbers and statistics that spell it all out called “Scholarship Stats.” You can check out the 664 colleges that offered swimming and diving programs in 2017 at “College Swimming and Scholarship Opportunities.” It’s a helpful page to check out swim and dive programs complete with average scholarships awarded and SAT and ACT scores.

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