Look­ing at Stu­dent Ath­letic Schol­ar­ships

MISHAWAKA--At Bethel Uni­ver­sity, ath­letic stu­dents are of­fered schol­ar­ships for play­ing a sport. Ath­letic schol­ar­ships are non-guar­an­teed, aid agree­ments be­tween an ath­lete and their uni­ver­sity. Uni­ver­si­ties coaches award these schol­ar­ships to ath­letes that sup­ported the coach’s per­cep­tion of their ath­letic abil­ity. Most schol­ar­ships area unit an­nual agree­ments that must be re­newed every year of their col­lege ca­reer. Schol­ar­ships are ei­ther clas­si­fied as equiv­a­lency, where coaches pro­vide par­tial schol­ar­ships to play­ers, or head count, wher­ever all of­fers area unit full schol­ar­ships. Ath­letic schol­ar­ships are of­fered at the NCAA DI, DII, NAIA and col­lege lev­els. 

 New in­com­ing and cur­rent Bethel ath­letes are wor­ried about their schol­ar­ships be­ing af­fected. We in­ter­viewed Tony Na­tali the Ath­letic Di­rec­tor for Bethel Uni­ver­sity. We asked him have ath­letic schol­ar­ships changed this year and Na­tali said, “No, it’s still dic­tated by the coaches, for their par­tic­u­lar sport they dic­tate how much and if there’s go­ing to be any ath­letic money avail­able and we work very closely with our fi­nan­cial aid of­fice with that.” We also asked if ath­letic schol­ar­ships haven’t changed this year would stu­dent ath­letes should­n’t be im­pacted. Tony said, “Not that I'm aware of, it's my first year of be­ing the Ath­letic Di­rec­tor and I'm still learn­ing some things, but what I'm aware of we’re still based on the same sys­tems and the coaches are in charge of work­ing closely to the fi­nan­cial aid of­fice.”