@ColeTrain4Ever[/author_info] [/author]
Early November is both an exciting and challenging time when it comes to fall collegiate sports. The season begins to wind down, conference playoffs determine who will play for the championship and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, begins to make the brackets of its national tournaments.
Two local programs have earned the right to play in their respective NCAA tournament: The College of New Jersey’s Lions will be playing in their 25th-straight Division III tournament after receiving an at-large bid thanks to their national ranking and record while Rutgers University’s Scarlet Knights clinched their highest-ever seed in the Division I tournament (#2).
However, one thing separates the two programs, and while both may be skilled and deserving of credit, only one of them will receive a lot of attention from this turn of events. Rutgers being a Division I program means it plays with the most skilled and competitive schools in the nation, while TCNJ plays in Division III, a cheaper alternative to DI that does not supply student athletes with scholarships.
But why is it that when talking about powerhouse teams in the NCAA, many never mention any other Division besides Division I?
Programs like TCNJ and Williams College in Williamstown, MA, who is hosting the NCAA Divisions III women’s soccer tournament this year, are both big programs in their relatively smaller competitive groups. The New Jersey Athletic Conference, where TCNJ plays, has many competitive and talented teams such as TCNJ, Montclair State University and current NJAC champion, Rowan University. But, it also includes many teams with few wins overall in their program, with team stats and records being relatively low.
The same goes for Williams College, who play in the New England Small College Athletic Association, where they have won six conference championships and have been to 11 finals overall, while four teams have never even made the final.
TCNJ women’s soccer assistant coach Katie Lindacher, who played women’s soccer all four years of her student tenure at the school, thinks the chance to play in the NCAA every year is a good thing.
“I believe there are many benefits of playing for a DIII school over a DI school, but one mainly being that I got the opportunity to compete for a National Championship every year, while still having the time to balance school, friends, and family,” Lindacher explained in an email. “I could have gone DI just to say I went DI and won nothing, but a couple of games.”
There is an interesting parallel between Division III women’s soccer, and the Australian men’s national soccer team pre 2006.
Before then, Australia played in the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC), and would dominate competition in showings that reached double digit differentials against teams like American Samoa, against whom they had the highest scoring game in FIFA qualifying history, 32-0, and Fiji. The team moved to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 2006, because while they were in Oceania, no matter how well they did they were never able to qualify for the World Cup due to the OFC only being granted a “Qualifier spot” for the World Cup. This meant Australia would always have to play a play-off against a South American team in order to qualify for the tournament, which they were never able to accomplish.
You can be a big fish in a small pond, or you can be a regular sized fish in a large ocean filled with other fish.
However, unlike Australia’s story, Lindacher also mentions that while the pond may be smaller in Division III, the quality of the sport does not decrease.
“The quality of soccer and competitiveness does not tremendously drop from DI to DIII, so I still got to play at a high level, while keeping a balance in my academia and social life,” Lindacher explained. “People do not understand Division III sports and tend to put them down as if they are not as good as other Divisions when, in fact, we (TCNJ) have defeated DI and DII teams. DIII is misunderstood and actually plays for the love of the game rather than scholarship money.”
Lindacher mentions how academics and social lives can be even in Division III, and that is something that sets DIII institutes apart.
According to scholorshipsstats.com, in 2013 the total value amount of athletic scholarships given out in Division I schools reached two billion dollars total, with the average scholarship for female athletes settling at $14,660.
Since Division III schools don’t pay student athletes scholarships, their funds can be used to improve other facets of college life, including academic and social parts. The College of New Jersey was just recently named a national exemplar by the Council of Undergraduate research (CUR), which according to a Signal article, was awarded “highlighting campus efforts and resources devoted to such studies.”
Lindacher believes titles like this and the athletic ones make institutes like TCNJ more appealing than other places that just highlight one.
“As highly academic TCNJ is, we are also known for great soccer too,” she explained. “As an athlete, when making my college decision, I had to think about both academics and soccer. TCNJ had both high quality education and soccer, so it was an easy choice.”
She also explains how the struggles of being a student athlete are not dulled by being in a lower division.
“Being a student-athlete at TCNJ is not easy, but with time management there was never an issue with assignments and soccer,” Lindacher said. “If I had to miss class for a game, I knew it was my responsibility to complete any work that I missed. There was never a time I thought soccer wasn’t as important as my grades because I came here to put forth my whole effort into both. The Division has nothing to do with school over soccer or vice versa. I could have gone DI or DII, but I chose TCNJ because of its balance of high academics and quality soccer.”
While the Divisions may differ, the quality of the sport still lies on the player, and with the fact that TCNJ women’s soccer team has made it the tournament two decades in a row, that should show just how qualified the program is.
There are schools in different divisions that are better than TCNJ, some that are not. The College may be looked over in some aspects to places like Rutgers or other big Division I schools, but on its own in women’s soccer it does stand out among the rest.
“TCNJ is a legacy just simply based on facts,” Lindacher proudly stated. “(We) have won three National Titles and has been to the Final Four twelve times. Coach (Joe) Russo fourth for most wins in all divisions of college soccer. So, I believe, in the soccer world, we are a powerhouse. In our division, we are a stand out team and one of the biggest games on everyone’s schedules. We can certainly play with other divisions, regardless of us being Division III.”