Does ALL the Money Have to Be from Athletics?

Two halves make a whole.  Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, think about getting multiple scholarships.  Think about this for a moment.  You want to go to college for free and play sports at the collegiate level.  Does it really matter if your school is paid for totally by the academic department?

You can put yourself in a great position if you start looking for and applying for non-athletic scholarships in your junior year.  Should you qualify for a partial non-athletic scholarship, that puts you in a great position when talking with coaches.  You can be up front with them that you don't need a full scholarship or you can raise the fact if you feel its necessary.  You can make the call.

Coaches will run across the odd athlete that will have such great grades that the coach may push for an academic scholarship for the athlete in the hopes of saving part of a scholarship.  You may be the one to get the other part of that scholarship.

Up until this point, we have been discussing this in terms of keeping your options open and making yourself a more viable althernative to other potential student athletes.  As noted in the article about "Not all Sholarships are Full Rides", you may be in a sport where full ride scholarships just are not given out to student athletes.  You may be in a sport like soccer where more than help the scholarship athletes are getting half ride scholarships at best.  It is your responsibility to fill in the economic gap the best you can. 

There are lots of scholarship dollars available.  You have to do a lot of work to find them and apply for them but it can be lucrative.  Look for ethnic or heritage type scholarships.  Maybe a parents employer has scholarship moneys available.  Civic organizations tend to support the academics by making scholarship monies available.  It's up to you to go out there and get those extra dollars to help