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The way Brandon Sizemore figured it, his basketball career had come to a near-perfect, albeit unwanted, ending.

The recent Newport graduate, a scrappy sparkplug on an overachieving team, had helped the Wildcats to an improbable run to the state tournament at Rupp Arena.

But he was 5 feet 9 and the squad’s sixth-leading scorer. His name wasn’t on recruiting watch lists, and college coaches hadn’t come to see his games. “I thought that was it,” Sizemore said. “Then this kind of popped up.”

Sizemore will attend NAIA Georgetown College in the fall on a partial basketball scholarship. He’ll face an uphill climb for varsity playing time on a huge roster that features several former NCAA Division I players.

And he’s not alone. Every year, small colleges add more roster space on more athletic teams to attract more students and more tuition money to their campuses. As a result, high school students have more opportunities than ever to play college sports, sometimes regardless of their skill level. It’s an option for many. But according to experts, students and their parents must enter the small-school recruiting process with open eyes.

According to a recent NCAA study, the association’s member schools are adding nearly 8,000 athletes every year. According to another NCAA study, from 1982 to 2007 the number of Division III athletes increased from 85,521 to 158,621 – a growth rate of 85 percent.

Most of the increase has come at the smallest schools because they have little to lose and much to gain. Division III schools can’t offer athletic scholarships. They field a variety of teams while spending relatively little. Those teams bring exposure – as well as millions of dollars in tuition – to the schools’ typically small, private and expensive liberal arts campuses.

Similarly priced and sized NAIA colleges are in a comparable situation but do offer athletic scholarships.

What small schools find in the recruiting process, according to experts, are students and parents who are willing to go to any lengths for a college athletics experience.

“The parents – even if they’re smart – they’re lambs to slaughter,” said Tom Elias of College Prospects of America. “Kids are emotional. They pick a school because of the color of the uniform or because the coach is nice or the other guys in the cafeteria say it’s a cool school. Meanwhile, the parents are looking at an expense of $20,000 to $40,000 per year for four years. Maybe that school gives your kid $1,000 and you can put in the newspaper that Johnny got a scholarship. But all of a sudden the parents are getting a loan for $19,000 a year.”

Some coaches say that for some seniors, the allure of calling oneself a college athlete – along with the pomp and circumstance that surrounds their decision – directly affects their futures.

Conner athletic director Tom Stellman said as recently as 10 years ago his school would hold one or two “signing ceremonies” a year. They usually were held when a highly recruited Division I athlete signed his or her national letter of intent. Now, he says, Conner averages 40 ceremonies a year. Sometimes the athletes are going to college on scholarship. This time of year, when Division III schools are landing commitments from students, many are not.

“Our policy is supposed to be one group (signing) in the winter and one in the spring,” Stellman said. “But everybody wants their own. We need to do them all at one time, as a team. It used to be more about team, not the individual. It just kind of evolved that way. … It’s out of hand.”

How out of hand? Roster numbers tell the tale.

Lindsey Wilson, an NAIA program in Kentucky, had 33 players on its men’s basketball roster last year. Rio Grande, an NAIA program in Ohio, had 30. By contrast, NCAA Division I schools such as UC, Xavier and Kentucky carry about half that many players.

Brescia, another NAIA school in Kentucky, had a 46-player baseball roster last year. That’s 13 players more than last year’s College World Series champion, LSU.

NCAA Division III football power Mount Union started the 2008 season with 215 players, including an 84-player freshman team. Meanwhile, Division I programs are allowed just 85 total scholarships.

Local Division III schools Thomas More and Mount St. Joseph started their football programs in 1990, partly to increase the schools’ enrollments. After struggling early, both programs have been nationally ranked in recent years and maintained rosters between 90 and 120 players..

Mount St. Joseph coach Rod Huber said building a program is a process – one that places a premium on numbers.

“When we were 0-10, we took anybody who would walk and chew gum,” he said. “… I tell kids all the time, if you really love this game, there’s a Division III program for you. It might not be Mount St. Joseph. But there are places out there, like we were 10 years ago, that are just looking for bodies – anybody who wants to play.”

Even at elite small-college programs, the numbers game is evident.

Harrison graduate Steve Strassell was a standout pitcher at Division II power Tusculum (Tenn.) College. He arrived on campus in 2004 to find a 51-player roster that included 27 pitchers.

“When you’re a senior in high school and you’re being recruited, sometimes you can get a sense for how competitive it’s going to be,” he said. “You have schools come in and say, ‘We really want you, but we’d really like you to walk on and then earn a scholarship.’ You kind of get the feeling that they’re thinking, ‘Hey, worst-case scenario, we have one more body on campus paying tuition.’ ”

To that end, the athletic departments at many smaller schools assign each sport an enrollment goal – a number of roster spots each coach should fill to increase or maintain the size of the student body.

The policy has worked at Lindsey Wilson, where athletic director Willis Pooler said enrollment goals and the addition of several sports have raised the number of the school’s athletes from 400 to 700 in the last seven years.

“One of the things that athletics bring to the table from an enrollment standpoint is you’re bringing in students who might not have otherwise looked at your school,” said Pooler. “That’s important. We look at that when we look at what programs we want to offer. We also just started a nursing program. We try to attract students in all kinds of ways.”

Lindsey Wilson uses JV teams to develop varsity players and add enrollment.

“For some students, it’s just participatory,” said Pooler. “For others, it’s a way to get into the varsity lineup. … But we’re not taking people who have no business playing. They’re at least JV-level athletes coming in.”

And when it comes to NAIA programs like Lindsey Wilson, many of the JV players receive athletic scholarships. According to NAIA rules, JV scholarships don’t count against the program’s scholarship limits. So even JV recruits often receive thousands of dollars worth of incentives to continue their careers.

Cooper High School senior Shumekia Overstreet is one of those players. The undersized center, who averaged 2.0 points and 2.9 rebounds for a fledgling program that went 11-16 this past season, recently signed with Midway College. The NAIA school’s annual tuition is $24,000. After grants and academic money and $11,000 in athletic money, she’ll pay about a quarter of regular tuition.

“I was stunned (by the scholarship offer),” said Overstreet’s mother Darla. “… When she first mentioned she wanted to play basketball in college, I said, ‘Ummm, Shumekia, I don’t know.

“But she loves the game. Even if she doesn’t get a lot of playing time, she has a core group of people that she can bond with and turn to. That’s important in college.”

Brandon Sizemore, the Newport grad, will have plenty of teammates to turn to. Georgetown had 33 players on last season’s varsity and JV teams. He said he knows he’s entering the program as a JV player – the JV and varsity practice separately and play different schedules – but he hopes to crack the starting lineup.

Georgetown coach Happy Osborne wouldn’t comment about Sizemore’s future or the inner workings of his program, but it’s obvious Georgetown isn’t the only side benefiting from the arrangement. Sizemore, who landed on Georgetown’s radar after Newport’s athletic director sent out a recruiting questionnaire on his behalf, wanted to go to Georgetown even before Osborne contacted him. He said if he keeps his grades up, after grants and scholarships, he’ll pay only $2,000 of the school’s annual $35,000 tuition.

“Money would have been the only reason why I couldn’t have gone there,” he said. “I’m not the richest. Coach Osborne told me he’d see what he could do, and they came back with a great offer.”

The challenge facing small-college coaches is projecting how high school seniors will develop while giving them a fair assessment. The coaches then must decide how much scholarship money to give the player, or in the case of Division III coaches, whether or not to invite him or her to join the team. At times, it becomes an ethical dilemma.

“There are schools that bring 20 or 25 kids in as freshmen, and then the kids show up and all of a sudden they get cut,” said Mount St. Joseph men’s basketball coach Larry Cox. “The creed I try to tell our coaches: Never recruit anybody who we don’t think can ever be anything more than a JV player after two years.”

The onus, according to high school coaches, should be on the recruits. Many tell players and their parents to research the schools interested in them. Go to their games; ask to see their practices; talk to the players. Compare your skills to theirs.

Ryan Vogel is doing just that. The recent Silver Grove graduate plans on attending Thomas More in the fall. He also would like to play on the Saints’ JV basketball team. So he spent the weeks after his senior season playing in open gyms with Thomas More players to find out if he could compete.

Batavia graduate Justin Lowe said he wished he’d had that same mentality when he enrolled at Thomas More in 2000. Lowe was part of a 15-player freshman class for the Saints basketball team. But he quickly learned why some small schools bring in so many players. He received enough money in grants and academic scholarships that during his freshman season he paid only room and board. By his sophomore year, he was on academic probation. Without the academic scholarships, he owed full tuition. On top of school and basketball, he took a job at CVS before leaving school.

Lowe, now 28, still owes approximately $30,000 in student loans.

“I wanted to stay in school, but there was really nothing else I could do,” he said. “There’s school and there’s sports. But at the end of the day you have to pay your bills. I’m still happy I went there. I just wish I would have had my head on right.”

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If you want a college athletic scholarship then don’t wait any longer. You must start today. Learn how to choose the right athletic conference for your talents and have a successful recruiting season ending with a scholarship offer.

CLICK HERE to see the college athletic scholarship recruiting guide that will show you how to earn the athletic scholarship you deserve.

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NCAA Division III schools do not offer direct athletic scholarships but they do “help” those who are attending the school to play sports. Most DIII schools will offer a financial aid package to those who were recruited that contains grants and other scholarships that total 50% of tuition.

What sports scholarship you go after depends on your personal goals for playing college sports. Is your only goal to earn a full scholarship? Then you need to look at DI and DII schools. Are you looking for a more balanced athletic and social college experience? Then smaller schools might be a better fit.

If a larger, more competitive school offers you a partial scholarship, then if you were to step back and recruit yourself to schools in a smaller division, you would stand a better chance at a larger scholarship or full scholarship.

There are many options, but you first must decide what your personal reasons are for wanting a sports scholarship. By doing a personal assessment of your academic, social and athletic abilities you can make the recruiting season much more rewarding and successful.

CLICK HERE to get the college athletic recruiting guide that will show you step-by-step how to get a sports scholarship.

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