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View Full Version : Duke adding varsity softball, more athletics scholarships



Dev11
12-16-2013, 03:16 PM
Check out the brief GoDuke press release:

http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&ATCLID=209342721&DB_OEM_ID=4200

Duke adds one more varsity sport and more scholarships in a number of other women's sports. It would appear that the ACC's tv money is enough to grow an athletic department in the midst of renovating numerous facilities (eyeroll directed at any departing ACC schools). Where will a softball field go? Wait and see.

ForkFondler
12-16-2013, 03:24 PM
Where will a softball field go? Wait and see.

I think it should go next to the ice rink.

uh_no
12-16-2013, 03:28 PM
Check out the brief GoDuke press release:

http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&ATCLID=209342721&DB_OEM_ID=4200

Duke adds one more varsity sport and more scholarships in a number of other women's sports. It would appear that the ACC's tv money is enough to grow an athletic department in the midst of renovating numerous facilities (eyeroll directed at any departing ACC schools). Where will a softball field go? Wait and see.

i would imagine that much increased football revenue over the past years doesn't hurt either, but yeah, no doubt some combination of both, and probably continued high levels of giving

burnspbesq
12-16-2013, 03:36 PM
I think it should go next to the ice rink.

Is Duke going to join Hockey East with ND and BC, or the ECAC with the Ivies, Colgate, etc.?

burnspbesq
12-16-2013, 03:39 PM
There is a not-very-hidden message here to BC, GaTech, Pitt, Clemson, VaTech, and Louisville about their claimed inability to add men's lacrosse.

Duvall
12-16-2013, 03:40 PM
Is Duke going to join Hockey East with ND and BC, or the ECAC with the Ivies, Colgate, etc.?

Just start ACC hockey with BC and Notre Dame, and invite all the other members of Hockey East (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_East) to join as one-sport affiliate members.

Well, except UConn of course.

Duvall
12-16-2013, 03:41 PM
There is a not-very-hidden message here to BC, GaTech, Pitt, Clemson, VaTech, and Louisville about their claimed inability to add men's lacrosse.

Has Louisville suggested that they can't add men's lacrosse? I kind of assumed they were next with their deep coffers and all.

roywhite
12-16-2013, 03:51 PM
The increased scholarship count sounds like good news and a positive reflection on the University's ability to sustain such a commitment. We certainly don't appear to be heading toward a D-2 model for athletics; indeed, looks we are pushing all our chips in.

From the goduke article:


DURHAM, N.C. – Duke University will add softball as a varsity sport, announced on Monday by Vice President and Director of Athletics Dr. Kevin White. In addition, Duke will increase the number of available scholarships for women’s fencing, rowing, women’s swimming and diving and women’s track and field to provide each program with the maximum limit allowed by the NCAA.



Here is a link to the maximum allowable scholarships by sport (believe this info is correct, though I don't see a mention of fencing---maybe 4.5? as shown for D-2)
Scholarships by sport (http://www.hsbaseballweb.com/scholarships_by_sport.htm)

As a fan of track and field, that scholarship commitment (18) looks pretty significant and welcome. If Duke is going to max. scholarships in a given sport, seems likely they will want to be in contention for national championships in those sports. Interesting times.

BD80
12-16-2013, 03:57 PM
I think it should go next to the ice rink.


Is Duke going to join Hockey East with ND and BC, or the ECAC with the Ivies, Colgate, etc.?

Not unless we're talking women's hockey. Pretty clear that all the money is going to women's sports. Not a hint of restoring the cuts made to men's programs.


Has Louisville suggested that they can't add men's lacrosse? I kind of assumed they were next with their deep coffers and all.

Louisville is still holding out for polo. Doesn't every school have multiple stables of polo ponies within walking distance of campus?

Mike Corey
12-16-2013, 04:08 PM
Positively thrilled with this news.

BlueDevil16
12-16-2013, 04:18 PM
Fencing gets 4 more schollys, Track gets one more, rowing gets like 8 and swimming gets like 7 or something like that.

Good news.

I would love to see a ACC hockey conference with Duke, but I assume thats years away, if ever.

MCFinARL
12-16-2013, 05:19 PM
Not unless we're talking women's hockey. Pretty clear that all the money is going to women's sports. Not a hint of restoring the cuts made to men's programs.


This is a LOT of women's scholarships to add all at once, though; makes me wonder if something might be in the works on the men's side that hasn't been announced yet that they need to balance.

Daddylawman
12-16-2013, 05:40 PM
As an alum whose daughter is now playing college softball I am ecstatic about this...I only wish it came sooner.

wilson
12-16-2013, 06:28 PM
I teach and coach softball and can't wait to start dispensing unabashedly biased advice. This is great news.

Jeff0r3
12-16-2013, 09:10 PM
This is great news. We have often joked with my daughter about going to Duke on a Softball Scholarship. Only problem was Duke had no Official Softball program. Now its actually a possibility.. She graduates in '17. If the Softball season starts in '18 as I've read then the planning couldn't be better. Great Great news.. Go Duke!

BlueDevil16
12-16-2013, 09:35 PM
This is a LOT of women's scholarships to add all at once, though; makes me wonder if something might be in the works on the men's side that hasn't been announced yet that they need to balance.

Nope. Previously Duke had about 59% of money going towards the men's side, with 41% to the women's teams, while the student body was almost even. They did not feel comfortable that they met the Title IX requirements, so they added both softball and these scholarships.

johnb
12-17-2013, 07:29 AM
Nope. Previously Duke had about 59% of money going towards the men's side, with 41% to the women's teams, while the student body was almost even. They did not feel comfortable that they met the Title IX requirements, so they added both softball and these scholarships.

From the women's bball thread: "Big game on Tues night vs UConn. It would be great to have a full house. General admission tickets are only $4 and reserved seats are $9 is you buy at goduke.com using the promo code DukePERQ (you may have to have a valid Dukecard for this price - not sure)."

In other words, the most popular woman's sport is #2 in the country and hosting #1, and tickets are still available for $4?

How much clearer could be the gap between The two revenue sports and all the rest?

Undergraduate enrollment is presumably a zero sum game. Almost all of those athletes will displace non-athletes; maybe a few of those women would have come to duke to play at the club level or without a scholarship or as the only elite athlete on the team, but it basically means duke will accept an additional 20 athletes and reject 20 non-athletes.

This move might be necessary to fulfill title IX (with football's huge numbers weighing down the men's side). It might be useful to bring in another 20 athletes who are likely to be excellent students. It might be fun to have an ACC network that allows me to watch another cluster of duke-clad athletes play a sport. But there's always a price, and, in this case, it's likely to be the continued focus on the focally hypertrophied applicant who has devoted herself to the single activity of, say, swimming. As I said, I think I like it overall, but just take a look at, say, our tennis or golf teams and look at their high school experiences, and you'll see that most were either homeschooled or attended a sports high school, often in another country; the idea that the average excellent high school athlete will make one of our teams is just not true. We're a powerhouse in college athletics, and that strikes me as mostly but not completely a good thing.

Dev11
12-17-2013, 08:39 AM
From the women's bball thread: "Big game on Tues night vs UConn. It would be great to have a full house. General admission tickets are only $4 and reserved seats are $9 is you buy at goduke.com using the promo code DukePERQ (you may have to have a valid Dukecard for this price - not sure)."

In other words, the most popular woman's sport is #2 in the country and hosting #1, and tickets are still available for $4?

How much clearer could be the gap between The two revenue sports and all the rest?

Undergraduate enrollment is presumably a zero sum game. Almost all of those athletes will displace non-athletes; maybe a few of those women would have come to duke to play at the club level or without a scholarship or as the only elite athlete on the team, but it basically means duke will accept an additional 20 athletes and reject 20 non-athletes.

This move might be necessary to fulfill title IX (with football's huge numbers weighing down the men's side). It might be useful to bring in another 20 athletes who are likely to be excellent students. It might be fun to have an ACC network that allows me to watch another cluster of duke-clad athletes play a sport. But there's always a price, and, in this case, it's likely to be the continued focus on the focally hypertrophied applicant who has devoted herself to the single activity of, say, swimming. As I said, I think I like it overall, but just take a look at, say, our tennis or golf teams and look at their high school experiences, and you'll see that most were either homeschooled or attended a sports high school, often in another country; the idea that the average excellent high school athlete will make one of our teams is just not true. We're a powerhouse in college athletics, and that strikes me as mostly but not completely a good thing.

I've always looked at athletics as being a way for high-performing kids to go to Duke, high-performing being applicable to nearly any pursuit. Being homeschooled or foreign does not matter one bit. I doubt that softball or rowing or cross country is going to have the leeway to let in lower caliber academic students the way that a basketball or football program might (and to be clear, I have no clue what kind of leeway K and Cut get with recruits). All that said, I don't see how a few more scholarship athletes might hurt Duke. You couldn't easily separate my Duke friends by whether or not they played on a non-revenue team based on their current life success.

On the flip side, if Duke is able to pay for a few more kids to come to school who are focused, are driven, and have already demonstrated excellence, I am on board. That says nothing about how much money women's basketball brings to Duke.

You mentioned the 'average excellent high school athlete.' I'm not sure what that means, but I don't think that Duke is looking for anything called 'average.'

roywhite
12-17-2013, 08:54 AM
Undergraduate enrollment is presumably a zero sum game. Almost all of those athletes will displace non-athletes; maybe a few of those women would have come to duke to play at the club level or without a scholarship or as the only elite athlete on the team, but it basically means duke will accept an additional 20 athletes and reject 20 non-athletes.

This move might be necessary to fulfill title IX (with football's huge numbers weighing down the men's side). It might be useful to bring in another 20 athletes who are likely to be excellent students. It might be fun to have an ACC network that allows me to watch another cluster of duke-clad athletes play a sport. But there's always a price, and, in this case, it's likely to be the continued focus on the focally hypertrophied applicant who has devoted herself to the single activity of, say, swimming. As I said, I think I like it overall, but just take a look at, say, our tennis or golf teams and look at their high school experiences, and you'll see that most were either homeschooled or attended a sports high school, often in another country; the idea that the average excellent high school athlete will make one of our teams is just not true. We're a powerhouse in college athletics, and that strikes me as mostly but not completely a good thing.

Interesting point. My rough calculation (and feel free to provide more precise figures) is that Duke will be approaching 300 scholarship athletes (and that would be a number of full scholarships, which doesn't take into account partial scholarships, often done in sports other than basketball and football) vs an undergraduate enrollment of 6500 or so. So, somewhat less than 5% of the students are on athletic scholarships. To what degree does that influence campus culture or diminish opportunities for applicants that lack top-level athletic talent? Don't know, but I'd guess we have one of the higher percentage of students on athletic scholarships in the country. Duke -- a jock school?

TheTrain
12-17-2013, 09:26 AM
Fencing gets 4 more schollys, Track gets one more, rowing gets like 8 and swimming gets like 7 or something like that.

Good news.

I would love to see a ACC hockey conference with Duke, but I assume thats years away, if ever.

My oldest son every day asks me when Duke is going to add an ice hockey program...........Add it for both genders....it would be great. Just do it before my son applies for admission for the Class of 2027. :cool:

Bluedog
12-17-2013, 10:42 AM
My oldest son every day asks me when Duke is going to add an ice hockey program...........Add it for both genders....it would be great. Just do it before my son applies for admission for the Class of 2027. :cool:

The club hockey team (http://www.dukehockey.com/)at Duke is supposed to be pretty decent...obviously, not the same as a varsity sport, but still provides a good opportunity for hockey players. Have a few Canadians on the team, so it must be legit. ;)

Duvall
12-17-2013, 11:09 AM
Undergraduate enrollment is presumably a zero sum game. Almost all of those athletes will displace non-athletes; maybe a few of those women would have come to duke to play at the club level or without a scholarship or as the only elite athlete on the team, but it basically means duke will accept an additional 20 athletes and reject 20 non-athletes.

Can we presume this? Aside from broad limits like dormitory space, is there any reason to think that Duke would respond to a small increase in the number of student-athletes admitted each year by reducing the number of non-athletes admitted? There's no hard cap on the size of each class.

Bluedog
12-17-2013, 11:33 AM
Can we presume this? Aside from broad limits like dormitory space, is there any reason to think that Duke would respond to a small increase in the number of student-athletes admitted each year by reducing the number of non-athletes admitted? There's no hard cap on the size of each class.

I think that's a safe assumption. Guttentag always says when admitting students how many freshman they are hoping to enroll. Obviously, with admission decisions/waitlist/summer melt uncertainty there is a little bit of leeway, but it's probably 20 or so students. Last year, Duke targeted a class size of 1,705 - not a hard cap, but hope to get as close as possible. I wouldn't expect that to change, so any increase in the number of athletes would reduce the number of non-athletes. However, in this case, they're simply making current student-athletes, current scholarship student-athletes (except for softball where it's an entirely new team). There are more women on the swimming and diving team than are available scholarships for sure.

I don't think the raw athlete count will change that much (about 10% of Duke students participate in varsity athletics last I heard) except for the fact that they're adding a completely new softball team as previously mentioned. I would expect the participation in the other sports to be about the same - although, of course, once you start offering more scholarships, the competition for them goes up (so, you could argue we'll see a larger emphasis on athletic prowess instead of academic to fill those "spots").

Dev11
12-17-2013, 11:46 AM
I think that's a safe assumption. Guttentag always says when admitting students how many freshman they are hoping to enroll. Obviously, with admission decisions/waitlist/summer melt uncertainty there is a little bit of leeway, but it's probably 20 or so students. Last year, Duke targeted a class size of 1,705 - not a hard cap, but hope to get as close as possible. I wouldn't expect that to change, so any increase in the number of athletes would reduce the number of non-athletes. However, in this case, they're simply making current student-athletes, current scholarship student-athletes (except for softball where it's an entirely new team). There are more women on the swimming and diving team than are available scholarships for sure.

I don't think the raw athlete count will change that much (about 10% of Duke students participate in varsity athletics last I heard) except for the fact that they're adding a completely new softball team as previously mentioned. I would expect the participation in the other sports to be about the same - although, of course, once you start offering more scholarships, the competition for them goes up (so, you could argue we'll see a larger emphasis on athletic prowess instead of academic to fill those "spots").

East Campus has a certain capacity for the freshman class that can only be changed slightly by adding extra beds, but if we're talking about adding 20 scholarships, that's only 5 in the freshman class. The on-campus housing for non-freshmen is less restrictive as I don't believe Central Campus ever fills up.

Bluedog
12-17-2013, 12:12 PM
East Campus has a certain capacity for the freshman class that can only be changed slightly by adding extra beds, but if we're talking about adding 20 scholarships, that's only 5 in the freshman class. The on-campus housing for non-freshmen is less restrictive as I don't believe Central Campus ever fills up.

In the fall (due to juniors studying abroad) it's not full...but in the spring, it's pretty close to capacity as Duke tries to "enhance the community feel" (ahem maximize revenues) by requiring people to live on campus for three years except for some juniors who are allowed to live off campus by way of a lottery system. I believe there are always more juniors who enter the lottery than juniors that are allowed to live off campus. Of course, if enrollment increased, they could then just start allowing more juniors to choose if they want to be off campus.

Dev11
12-17-2013, 12:44 PM
In the fall (due to juniors studying abroad) it's not full...but in the spring, it's pretty close to capacity as Duke tries to "enhance the community feel" (ahem maximize revenues) by requiring people to live on campus for three years except for some juniors who are allowed to live off campus by way of a lottery system. I believe there are always more juniors who enter the lottery than juniors that are allowed to live off campus. Of course, if enrollment increased, they could then just start allowing more juniors to choose if they want to be off campus.

Same result then, as sophomores can always take more space on Central and upperclassmen can always enter vacant space off-campus. Only the size of the freshman class is specifically limited.

formerdukeathlete
12-17-2013, 04:29 PM
I think that's a safe assumption. Guttentag always says when admitting students how many freshman they are hoping to enroll. Obviously, with admission decisions/waitlist/summer melt uncertainty there is a little bit of leeway, but it's probably 20 or so students. Last year, Duke targeted a class size of 1,705 - not a hard cap, but hope to get as close as possible. I wouldn't expect that to change, so any increase in the number of athletes would reduce the number of non-athletes. However, in this case, they're simply making current student-athletes, current scholarship student-athletes (except for softball where it's an entirely new team). There are more women on the swimming and diving team than are available scholarships for sure.

I don't think the raw athlete count will change that much (about 10% of Duke students participate in varsity athletics last I heard) except for the fact that they're adding a completely new softball team as previously mentioned. I would expect the participation in the other sports to be about the same - although, of course, once you start offering more scholarships, the competition for them goes up (so, you could argue we'll see a larger emphasis on athletic prowess instead of academic to fill those "spots").

Though scholarships are being added for 4 womens sports, I think it is a leap to suggest that spots will be taken from non-athletes with respect to these scholarships. In all sports where scholarships are being added, as well as Softball, the scholarships are or can be apportioned among the rosters for these teams. Softball will be a new team. What is the typical roster for Softball, 20? Well, then this is the number of athletic somewhat preferred admits who may share among them the full allotment of NCAA scholarships for Softball. In virtually all cases women athletes who will be recruited to Duke for these sports will be well-qualified academically, within 1 SD of the mean academic criteria of their clases.

Even with these scholarships, student athletes enrolling at Duke will represent roughly 10% of the freshman class each year. At Harvard, the number of student-athletes who receive some preference in admissions is 20% of the freshman class.

This, expanding the scholarships to the full allotment, I think means each women's varsity team at Duke will be fully funded. This is terrific.

Bluedog
12-17-2013, 06:35 PM
Though scholarships are being added for 4 womens sports, I think it is a leap to suggest that spots will be taken from non-athletes with respect to these scholarships.

I agree with you - I meant to suggest that would not be the case except perhaps for the creation of the softball team. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Overall, I'm in favor of adding women's athletic scholarships and think it's a great idea adding a softball team.

formerdukeathlete
12-18-2013, 07:56 AM
I agree with you - I meant to suggest that would not be the case except perhaps for the creation of the softball team. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Overall, I'm in favor of adding women's athletic scholarships and think it's a great idea adding a softball team.

I should have added, "I agree with you, I think it is a leap." We were on the same page about that. Further to that, I dont know if adding the full allotment of scholarships to Women's Fencing, Track and Field, Swimming and Diving, Rowing would increase (by much, if at all) the numbers of student athletes in these sports who receive some preference in the Admission process. While we might bring in a few more kids a year, I think any increases in roster sizes in these sports would be more a function of less attrition. For example, a student athlete on athletic scholarship would be more likely to stay on the team for 4 years. At Dartmouth, Football gets about 30 preferred admits each year. But, by the end of fall practice, they might be down to the low 20s of that freshman class still on the team.

http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/swimming-women/d1 Taking a look at the most recent NCAA rankings in Women's Swimming and Diving, I count 4 ACC teams (if you include Louisville), 6 Big Ten, 7 Pac 12, 8 SEC teams in the top 25. Duke now will be in the mix each year and should make it 5 (or more) for the ACC :-)