Saturday Musings

Musing on EADA data and recruiting this morning.

There is probably more the EADA data doesn’t tell us or even stories on how it misleads us than what we can actually tell from the data but it hasn’t stopped me from wondering through the molasses. We have 4 schools that participate in Women’s Beach Volleyball. I was surprised to see Hendrix in the 2019 data as they started playing in 2020. Maybe the expenses were there for the creation of their beach volleyball facility? Total expenses in 2019 were $50,691, in case you were wondering. The other three playing programs came in at $59,224 (Stevenson), $45,602 (LaGrange) and $29,403 (Huntingdon).

There are five schools nationally that spent over $10 million on athletics (overall) in 2019:

1. Bowdoin College $14,192,310

2. RIT $11,165,035

3. Colorado College $10,318,258

4. St. Lawrence College $10,161,208

5. Christopher Newport University $10,156,938

Lowest volleyball playing school is Trinity Washington University at $325,582.

The largest volleyball programs by participants are Loras (37), Pacific (35), Millikin (35), Benedictine (34), Bethel (34) and Concordia-Wisconsin (30). Benedictine, as mentioned in the EADA (2019) article, probably listed their data for two campuses (and two different teams). The others all have JV or “Varsity Reserve” teams. Smallest team in 2019 goes to Pine Manor College with 7.

Smaller is better? The 2019 National Champions (Johns Hopkins) had 11 players on their team.

If you scrounge around long enough, you’ll find cases where a program will have only one coach for a category. Usually this is a coed sport like sailing. Well, since you have to specify the average coaching salary per category, we find out what their salary is because, well when you divide something by 1, you get undefined (or something like that). I won’t give away any salaries but if you can figure out how to live on $80,000/year in New England then you may want to check on any job openings.

Switching over to recruiting. Looks like two sets of twins are sticking together. ETBU is getting Brooke and Megan O’Neal while Schreiner is getting Jordyn and Taylor Braxton.

Pacific looks to be bringing in 13 players in 2021. That may stand as the largest class.

Puget Sound is recruiting out of Taiwan it seems. Sarah Johnsen is listed at 6’0” and I have to think there weren’t many as tall as her there? I don’t have the Loggers official list of recruits but they are going tall this year. I’ve got 5 so far and 5’10” is the shortest. Three are 6’ or taller.

Colorado College has three recruits listed at 6’2”.

UC Santa Cruz has 4 recruits listed. Range from 5’11” to 6’1”.

One of Pacific’s recruits is listed at 5’0”. (Just trying to be fair.)

Just saw the PLU release for their recruits. They have three incoming freshmen with the first name of Noelani! Only one is from Hawaii but it wouldn’t surprise me if all three have a Hawaiian connection.

In other news, I haven’t seen anything on the construction of the RACs. With 10 regions now, I assume most are going to have to change somewhat and two will be new. In the West, which should stay the same, we have to remember that we have a new RAC Chair from last year (Whittier Coach Chris Duarte-McDermott) so someone has to replace him as the SCIAC representative. I can’t remember if any terms are expiring for the other members or not.