Rising school standards and NCAA rule changes will pose new challenges to the athletic department.
Going along with the college’s trend of gradually boosting its academic profile, a campaign has been implemented to increase the freshmen class’s average ACT score to 31 by 2018. Since nearly 25 percent of the student body are varsity athletes, the new standards have influenced the varsity coaches’ recruiting process.
“It’s going to make an extremely difficult job several times harder than it already is,” head softball coach John Abraham said. “Its already the case that about 90 percent of potential recruits are off the table for us, now it will be about 95 percent.”
Jeff Lantis, director of external relations for athletics, has a unique perspective on the change: he served as the school’s director of admission for the past 25 years.
“It will certainly make it challenging in my humble view; however, we have the best academic profile of any Division II college in the country, the only school that comes close is Colorado School of Mines,” Lantis said.
Colorado school’s average ACT is at 30. Hillsdale’s is currently at 29.
Lantis said Hillsdale’s competition for the top student athletes is not as much with other Division II schools, but among the Ivy League and military schools.
Director of Athletics Don Brubacher sees the goal as a challenge, but a do-able one.
“It’s more difficult in one respect, but we will receive benefits in another respect,” director of athletics Don Brubacher said. “The higher the academic standards, the smaller the pool of prospective student athletes, which is true for all students. But as the college’s academic reputation grows it actually becomes easier to attract interest from student with high academic achievements.”
In terms of the NCAA rule change- up until last year, official school visits for athletes were not allowed until the fall of a high school students’ senior year. Now juniors are allowed official visits.
“It was basically the NCAA acknowledging reality,” Abraham said.
Abraham explained that with most sports, recruiting begins at the start of an athlete’s junior year, which put prospectives at a disadvantage in past years since they were limited to unofficial visits.
The difference between unofficial and official visits is huge, sophomore softball player Jessie Fox said.
“On an unofficial visit, you just get to see the campus and meet the coaches,” Fox said. “On an official visit, you get a whole 24 hours. You can tour the school, attend a class, scrimmage with the team for up to two hours, and spend the night here with potential teammates.”
Fall is the recruiting season for the baseball and softball teams, and since the NCAA implemented the change last winter, this is the first recruiting season the teams are affected by the new change.
“We’ve had so many girls visit. We’ve been averaging two to four visits every week,” Fox said. “Normally freshmen are supposed to host because they are the closest in age, but sophomores are now needed to host too.”
However, the two new changes- the ACT requirement and juniors’ ability to visit- don’t mesh well together, Abraham said.
“Juniors can visit, but we can’t commit to them until we know their ACT score, and a lot of times they haven’t taken it yet,” Abraham said. “We are at a monumental disadvantage compared to the rest of the GLIAC.”
