Retention (2021)

I originally titled this annual article as “early retirement” but that got me a lot of personal congratulation comments for those that, I guess, really didn’t read the piece. I then changed it to “Retention”. Retention means the number of non-seniors that a school keeps going into the new season. At first blush, we may think everyone coming into a program stays their 4-years but often more leave the program prior to their senior year than stay. The reasons are numerous (injuries, money, focus on studies, early graduation, etc.) and most make sense but when you look at these numbers it’s natural to wonder about the school and the coaching staff in cases where there is a lot of turnover. All I can say (again) is that in most cases it has nothing to do with there being an institutional problem. But, like anything else, if you are thinking about attending any school and there is a lot of turnover in the program, I would not be afraid to bring it up to the coaching staff during the recruitment process. I am sure they would love to address it rather than the concern be a cloud over your head. (Editor’s note: That was basically reprinted from 2019.)

Even though we are within 2 weeks of matches being played, there are still a number of schools that haven’t published their 2021 rosters. These schools are Mills College, Howard Payne, Lewis & Clark, Pacific, PLU, Chapman and Occidental. I last did this article two years ago (as we know there was no season in the fall of 2020) and I thought it would be interesting to monitor those schools who seem to be “late” on their rosters. Honestly, I’m just doing this for me so I have a place I can reference next year when I get upset at Lewis & Clark (again). I also included the years where their rosters were “late”.

• Cal Lutheran: 2018

• Chapman: 2021

• Howard Payne: 2019, 2021

• La Verne: 2018

• Lewis & Clark: 2018, 2019, 2021

• Linfield: 2018, 2021

• Mills College: 2018, 2021

• Occidental: 2021

• Pacific: 2018, 2019, 2021

• PLU: 2018,2021

• Redlands: 2018, 2019

I will be giving out a retention percentage below. This is calculated as 1 – (non-seniors leaving/(total roster – graduating seniors)). Keep in mind that this doesn’t give credit to schools that have graduated seniors sticking around. Until Southwestern can figure out how to do this, I frown on this process.

In 2019, we only had two schools that retained 100% of their non-seniors (PLU and St. Thomas). Here are the schools with perfect retention numbers this year:

• George Fox

• Colorado College

• Cal Lutheran

• CMS

• Pomona-Pitzer

• Redlands

Please remember that this process is highly manual on my part and with the SCIAC missing a season they actually had some schools that never published their 2020 roster so they can’t be included in this work. Those schools were La Verne and Whittier. I guess Occidental is technically in this group, too, but since I don’t have their 2021 roster it doesn’t really matter. (Side note: Did Occidental move and not leave a forwarding address or something?)

If my numbers are correct (and I worry about the SCIAC schools) that is a big improvement over 2019 and it’s been a crazy Covid year!

Schools at or above 75% are:

Puget Sound – 95% UC Santa Cruz – 94.1% Schreiner – 92.9% St. Thomas – 91.7% Hardin-Simons – 90.9% Texas Lutheran – 88.9% UT-Dallas – 88.9% Whitworth – 88.9% Willamette – 88.9% Caltech – 87.5% Austin College – 84.6% McMurry – 83.3% Southwestern – 83.3% Trinity – 83.3% Centenary – 82.4% Belhaven – 78.6%

This is about the same number of schools in this grouping as in 2019. As I’ve said in the past, the schools that are able to retain the most players from year-to-year should be at an advantage. They know the staff, the routine and have more experience. I also like to see the schools that traditionally struggle in this group because it may mean they are figuring things out and should be stronger in the years to come.

For the first time, there isn’t a school with less than a 50% retention number. Pretty amazing with all of the difficulties these programs have had to deal with in the past year. Our lowest retention number is Concordia with 50%. The rest were all in the 60s or lower 70s as far as retention percentages.

Since I was tracking rosters, here are some additional tidbits that I found interesting:

The largest rosters in Region X look like they will be at Puget Sound and Whittier. Each has 25 listed. Puget Sound also had the largest roster in 2019.

Others schools at 20 or more are Pomona-Pitzer (23), Schreiner (23), Texas Lutheran (23), Austin College (22), Centenary (21), Whitworth (21), Colorado College (20), CMS (20), Mary Hardin-Baylor (20), Sul Ross State (20) and UC Santa Cruz (20). Overall, we have a lot more schools with 20 or more on the roster than we did in 2019. Some of this is going to be about graduating seniors sticking around for another year. I also believe that the retention of 2020 first-years will be a lot higher this year than normal because they never got a chance to play a full season. It’s natural to lose a number of first-years after a full season because of lack of playing time and seeing what is required of them while balancing academics. There could also be some pressure on these coaches to have larger rosters to help with enrollment but I haven’t heard that from anyone in the region.

The smallest rosters are at Concordia and Willamette. Each have 12 players right now.

The most recruits coming in to one school looks to be Austin College with 11.

The least number of recruits appears to be Caltech with 0.

The most returners are by Puget Sound with 19 followed by Pomona-Pitzer with 17. Both of these schools appeared on this line back in 2019. I think Whittier may be returning 17, as well, but I don’t have their 2020 rosters to compare against.

I try to track transfers coming in but this can be difficult. They can be merged in with players that came from campus but didn’t play in previous years. (I don’t have a category for these players so they get mixed in depending on my mood that day.) It appears La Verne will have 3 transfers this year. I also see Pomona-Pitzer with 3 but I remember something strange when I was figuring out their roster so who knows what mood I was in that day. (Shout out to Pomona-Pitzer Grace Fan as she graduated from my high school and had to be a lot more popular than I was in my day.)