COLLEGE TENNIS RECRUITING
TENNIS SCHOLARSHIPS
College tennis is high quality and very exciting. Playing college tennis is a great opportunity to improve your game, get great coaching and play against great competition. You get to do all this while also earning a college degree.
Unlike college basketball or football programs, college tennis programs do not have large budgets. As a consequence, you will not see many tennis scouts and recruiters watching high school matches. The best way to get in front of college coaches is by marketing yourself. You can do this by setting up a recruiting profile and adding a video. Coaches will want to see a video of a match and also practice drills.
There are around 190,000 men and 210,000 women playing tennis in high school. Only about 10,000 men and 10,000 women get the opportunity to play intercollegiate tennis. Many scholarship athletes on college tennis teams are international athletes. If you’re serious about getting recruited, you must work at getting yourself recruited because you have lots of competition in the U.S and internationally.
All men's tennis scholarships are classed as equivalency or partial.
NCAA
Women's tennis at NCAA DI level is a head count sport. There are 325 schools that offer tennis scholarships in Division one. 8 tennis scholarships can be awarded to women and 4.5 for men. All men's tennis scholarships are classed as equivalency or partial, so a coach can break up the 4.5 full scholarships into many partial scholarships.
At the NCAA DII level 232 institutions can allocate 4.5 scholarships to men and 6 for women.
383 NCAA DIII colleges play intercollegiate tennis, but there are no scholarships at this level. Other forms of financial aid may be available.
NAIA
109 colleges affiliated with the NAIA offer tennis as a scholarship sport. There are 5 scholarships allocated to both men’s and women’s programs. Tennis is classed as an equivalency sport in the NAIA.
NJCAA
84 Community colleges sponsor intercollegiate tennis teams. 9 scholarships can be awarded to both men’s and women’s teams.
Here are some things that you can do to increase your chances of being recruited.
- Have good grades. Without good grades you’re not going to get recruited. Coaches want to recruit tennis players who have strong grades so they know they will be academically eligible to compete throughout college.
- Go to tennis camps. There are a large number of colleges that run tennis camps. This is a great way to get exposure and be seen by the coaches that you’re most interested in playing for. The Intercollegiate tennis association also conducts summer tournaments and challenges; another excellent way to get the attention of recruiters and scouts.
- Be proactive. Remember that you have to be proactive in your recruiting process. Tennis produces little or no income for the college and consequently a coach’s budget is small.
- Playing Doubles. Being just a great singles player isn’t enough for coaches when they decide who to award tennis scholarships to. Doubles is a big part of college tennis and being a strong doubles player gives you an advantage when it comes to scholarships.
