Purpose
Participation in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship sports has grown substantially in the past 25 years. The greatest growth has come from women's participation, which has ballooned from 64,390 in 1981-1982—the year the NCAA started governing women's collegiate sports—to 168,583 in 2005-2006 (NCAA, 2007). Of the 20 most popular NCAA sports for women, softball currently ranks fourth in the number of participants, following soccer, outdoor track, and indoor track. Specifically, the number of women playing NCAA softball has increased from 7,465 in 1981-1982 to 16,609 in 2005-2006 and is continuing to climb (NCAA, 2007). The growth of women's collegiate sports and the increasing popularity of softball have implications for college athletic programs and NCAA schools trying to recruit female athletes. Above all, the competition for coaches and universities to attract highly desirable female student-athletes has greatly increased. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation was to examine factors influencing college selection by NCAA Division I, II and III softball players.
Methods
The Influential Factors Survey for Student-Athletes (32 items with the responses on a 5-point Likert-type scale) was used to collect data from 21 teams representing 323 female collegiate softball student-athletes. The participants had an average age of 19.97 years, had played softball for 7.20 years, and most (94.2%) classified themselves as Caucasian.
Analysis/Results
Descriptive statistics showed the most influential factors were: university offers specific major of interest, academic reputation of university, coach's personality/style, academic facilities, opportunity to play early in career, and graduation rate of athletes. Descriptive analysis further revealed the academic category to have the greatest overall influence in the college selection process. A MANOVA revealed significant differences in the college selection process by softball student-athletes at NCAA Division I, II, and III institutions (p < .05). Athletics was viewed as more influential in the college decision process for Division I softball players than Division II players. Student-athletes from Division II indicated academics to be relatively more important than both Division I or III athletes. Division III softball players viewed social atmosphere as more significant than those from Division I or II. Coaching staff was found to be more influential to Division I collegiate athletes than Division II or III athletes. Lastly, financial aid was considered more important to women from Division II than women from Division I or III.
Conclusions
Academic factors are most important to softball players when selecting a college to attend. Recommendations for collegiate softball coaches and athletic department administrators as well as for future research will be discussed.