How do you earn a scholarship to compete in a women's wrestling program? The answer is more complicated than one might think.

Below are seven general insights from head women’s coaches at the NCAA (DI, II, and III), NAIA, and junior college levels.

1. Every Program Is Different

This seems obvious, but every school has different tuition rates, different coaches, different needs, different scholarship availability, and different internal expectations. 

You might be one of the best high school wrestlers in the nation, but a program has two quality wrestlers at a weight, so the timing and scholarship amount might change based on need. 

Some schools have different scholarship amounts. Travis Mercado coaches at Colorado Mesa — a Division II program in Grand Junction. He started with half a scholarship for his entire program, but now he’s at six.

“Nobody gets a full athletic scholarship,” said Presbyterian coach Brian Vutianitis. “We are all partial. We have 30 girls, so we have six scholarships to host a team of 30.”

Junior colleges have a different athletic scholarship model. They can offer athletic scholarships to 22 LOI (Letter of Intent) wrestlers. 

Using a fictitious and even number of $100,000 athletic dollars means a junior college can give varying amounts to 22 athletes. One athlete might get $20,000, another $10,000, and another $5,000 — as long as it adds up to $100,000 between a maximum of 22 athletes. 

“Junior college commitments are only for one year,” Iowa Central coach Zak Hensley said. “All of our athletes have to re-sign if they return. That price can go up. We never like to take money away from kids, but if they’re not the right fit, you can go a different way, even though we never want to do that to a kid. You can go up or down, but it will pretty much go up for our returners.”

2. There Are Myths About Athletic Scholarships

Clout comes from telling everyone you’re on an athletic scholarship, but math teachers around the world are collectively rolling their eyes. 

Tuition at college A might be $50,000, and a coach offers a $10,000 athletic scholarship.

Tuition at college B might be $25,000, and a coach offers a $5,000 athletic scholarship. 

Option B is offering less money, but you’ll pay double at Option A. You can tell all your friends and family that you received twice as much athletic scholarship money and neglect to tell them you’re paying twice as much in tuition.

"For some reason, there are people out there who will say, ‘I don’t want to go there. You’re not offering me athletic money when it would be more expensive if I offered you athletic money.’” -- Presbyterian coach Brian Vutianitis

Mercado said this: “When parents are looking at scholarship dollars and financial aid, I advise them to ask,” 

"What is my out-of-pocket cost going to be?"

"Will my daughter have student loans?"

"How many credit hours are required, because that changes the cost of your tuition?"

“Getting a good academic offer and a financial aid package may be the same thing you get at a D1 or a D2 school,” Vutianitis said. “Why not take that opportunity if it’s really good? A lot of people think it has to say athletic dollars, but when we’re up here fighting for them in the financial aid office, for us, it says PC grant, and that’s their financial aid. 

“The financial aid gave them more than if I’d given them athletic dollars. For some reason, there are people out there who will say, ‘I don’t want to go there. You’re not offering me athletic money when it would be more expensive if I offered you athletic money.’”

3. Full Athletic Scholarships Are Virtually Non-Existent

Sure, a few women’s wrestlers have received full-ride scholarships — but they are rare. 

“When I think of full-ride scholarships, I think a lot of people have a misconception of what Division I football is,” Mercado said. “None of us — and I mean from my own experience at Colorado Mesa — have full rides to give out.

“Full scholarships have been awarded when a student-athlete has met the highest academic merit award, and they get a full Pell Grant, and they get some other supplemental scholarships and institutional things, plus an athletic scholarship. 

"I think sometimes people live in fantasy land. We aren’t SEC football.” -- Colorado Mesa coach Travis Mercado.

"Now their out-of-pocket cost is near or close to zero. Full grant and aid at Colorado Mesa is $28,000. I’ve never awarded $28,000 in an athletic scholarship. In the grand scheme of things, that would take away one of my six full scholarships. I could take that and do four $7,000 scholarships. 

“Most times at Division II levels, it is how we maximize our total dollars for the student-athletes and give out partials. I know the term full ride gets thrown out a lot. I think sometimes people live in fantasy land. We aren’t SEC football.”

4. Division III Schools (Non-Athletic Scholarships) Might Be A Better Value Than Their Athletic Scholarship Counterparts

This goes back to the athletic scholarship myth. Division III can’t offer athletic scholarships, but a school might lower your costs through academic financial aid. Why not explore multiple options to see if a Division III school might be a better fit?

“A lot of times it’s just clout,” said Joe Jamison, head coach at D3 Ursinus College. “Someone might get offered a D1 or a D2 scholarship. Why do you care where the money is coming from? I’m super happy for you that X school gave you $5,000 in athletic money. We just gave you $40,000 in a merit scholarship that you earned with your academics. That’s guaranteed money as long as you do what you’re supposed to do academically. That can’t ever be taken away from you — ever. 

“No matter what happens, that’s guaranteed money. A lot of times, athletes feel good that they were offered a partial athletic scholarship, and if I had the ability, I would do it, too — but I don’t."

"A lot of times, athletic scholarships are just clout. Why do you care where the money is coming from?" -- Ursinus coach Joe Jamison

Mercado: “Always look at those scholarship dollars. You don’t need athletic scholarship dollars to be successful. Look at Joe Norton and North Central. Division III is a completely different model, but those girls that he’s recruiting and signing and getting to go to his school aren’t going because of money. They are going because of experience, coaching, team environment, culture, and winning. I think that’s an important piece of the entire puzzle. 

“Some of these new schools have scholarship dollars to throw around. They have a brand new team and need to fill a roster. It’s all relative to each school.” 

5. Everything Counts — Not Just Wrestling

Life University coach Ashley Flavin uses four buckets to evaluate scholarship allocation.
— Athletic performance.
— Grades.
— Culture fit (Are you working hard? Are you a good person?)
— Extracurricular (Are you volunteering? Are you doing extra?)

“You don’t have to be perfect at all four, but I’d like you to be really good in at least three, and if you’re great in all four, maybe we can have a conversation about how much money you’re getting.

“If you’re a national championship wrestler and the best grades you can give me are a 2.7, I’m going to be excited about you because school is sometimes harder for some people than others. If your grades aren’t good, you’re not a great wrestler, you’re drinking all the time, and I’m constantly trying to pull you into things, why would I give you money at all?

“I look at the balance across the four. We are a sports team, so academic performance matters. You could be a World team member, but if you don’t fill any of the other columns, I’m not making you an offer.”

6. Athletic Scholarships Can Increase Or Decrease Based On A Variety Of Factors

Things can fluctuate and change throughout a wrestler’s college career. Scholarships can increase or decrease based on a coach’s evaluation of your upside and potential. 

Mercado: “Jennesis Martinez was a non-scholarship athlete when she started for us. Her scholarship dollars increased because she performed on the mat. She was a five-time scholar All-American, four-time All-American, and five-time national qualifier. Any opportunity that we had when our budget increased and grew, we tried to increase and reward that. 

“The dollar amount we have to start isn’t necessarily set in stone for the duration. We are trying to reward our student-athletes. As girls graduate and money frees up, we can allocate it where we see fit.”

"I’m looking at the effort and what you’re putting into it." -- Life coach Ashley Flavin

Flavin: “Someone might ask if she can get more money if they do well at Fargo. My answer is no, I’m giving you the same amount of money, but if you do poorly, I’m not taking it away. 

"I’m looking at the effort and what you’re putting into it. We’re not taking your money away if you get hurt, but if you don’t show up to rehab and everything starts slipping, and you’re not contributing to the team, then you’re not filling those columns. Your job as a wrestler is to get better, and if you’re not doing what you need to do, then we start talking about losing money.

“We would have a lot of conversations before it got that far. Missing weight once likely won’t affect you, but you might be on probation if you do this again, and we’ll talk about taking money away. If you miss weight at conference or nationals, that is another conversation. They are 18 to 22. We expect them to make mistakes, but they need to learn from their mistakes and get better. 

“There have been girls at the end of the year that we took money from, and they thought they were getting kicked off the team. They were relieved to be losing money. We had a girl who couldn’t wrestle because of an injury, but we gave her a scholarship increase because we needed her. Her performance didn’t matter.” 

7. Chase The School, Not The Money

Chase the coaching.

Chase the teammates.

Chase the school size.

Chase the type of school.

Chase the culture.

“As a young lady coming into college, my best advice is don’t chase the dollars, chase the school," Mercado said. “If it’s a school that will get you the best overall rate of return in the sense of coaching, team environment, travel, wrestling experience, social experience — all of those things. Chase that. Don’t chase the dollars because not everybody has the same budget.”

That’s an overview. Below are detailed insights from five head coaches. 

Brian Vutianitis, Presbyterian, NCAA Division I

The toughest thing with each college is how many scholarships you have. For us, everything is going to be partial. It will be determined based on your academic merit. Since we are a private school, we offer a lot of academic scholarships, but we also can’t stack on top of financial aid. If someone receives financial aid that would match our athletic scholarship, we might not offer an athletic scholarship to someone who would get an athletic scholarship to almost any other school. 

There are definitely those girls that we are very high on and who we’re going to allocate money towards. We usually start on the lower end for their freshman year, and we’re an earn-as-you-go type of program.

"We allocate money to people where this is the perfect fit." -- Presbyterian coach Bruan Vutianitis

If they are the perfect fit, based on their visit, based on their academics, and based on whether this college makes sense for them, as well as it making sense for us to have them on the team, then they are a lot more likely to earn scholarship money here. If I feel like they are coming here because they just want to wrestle, there’s a smaller chance that scholarship money will go to them because they might not want to stay here for four years. 

We allocate money to people where this is the perfect fit. 

We get six full scholarships, which is not ideal comparably. I know there are a lot of schools out there that don’t get that, so we’re happy to get it. At this level, we aren’t getting the maximum amount, which is tough. We’re recruiting against some of the bigger schools that are adding programs. 

Technically, if your school opts into revenue sharing, where you can pay your student-athletes, you can have 30. Our school did not buy in, so we would be at 9.9. 

Several girls won’t get athletic scholarships, which is where financial aid is a huge piece. That’s why we don’t recruit anybody under a 3.5 GPA. We’re big on academics here, and that’s something we look for in recruiting. Good grades help because they will get a better scholarship from the school, but it also helps us out a little bit because that makes up for some of the difference we would have to give them if they didn’t have good grades. 

We really try to save our scholarship dollars for those who truly make sense for them. 

We’re big on not making it come down to money. There’s always an investment on both sides. The big thing for us is: Does this make sense for you? Not just wrestling, but lifestyle and all the things that come with it in terms of school. We’re big on that, and we don’t want to veer from that. 

We’ve thought about it at times by trying to get somebody who’s really good. If they don’t culturally make sense for us, overall, their being really good won’t affect the team in the way we want it to. 

Travis Mercado, Colorado Mesa, NCAA Division II

It’s different for every student, every circumstance, every opportunity that we have. As we’ve moved forward in this new era where it’s one per weight class, we’ve been strategic about where we are currently and the dollars already allocated. Who’s graduating and what dollars are allocated to them? Do we have dollars allocated to someone at a weight, and how many more years do they have? We look at that first. 

Every school is different.

We want to use an athletic scholarship to bring someone in who will be an impactful person right away. Mostly, it comes down to the needs of the team and the weight classes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t allocate scholarship dollars to someone we recruit.

As we are going into year eight, we are closer to six and a half full scholarships. It depends on how you look at it because of equivalency. You can base it on your in-state tuition or out-of-state tuition. We try to find the medium of what it is. 

I take my total dollar amount and divide it by 10. That gives X dollars per weight class to spend. I can go over that, but it means I have fewer dollars to spend in another weight class. 

We are constantly rewarding the athletes who are performing athletically, academically, and leading the team. I think a lot of teams and coaches think this way, but it’s a dollar amount to start, and throughout the years, we have constantly rewarded our student-athletes for doing well. 

There’s a school out there that has that availability to give full scholarships, whether it’s a Division II, Division I, or NAIA. I’m sure someone has the availability or funding to do so. I would love to, but I don’t. 

We had a family create an athletic scholarship endowment. We started a second one with a local company in town. The school has two endowed scholarships that will never go away and continue to fund our student-athletes.

I’m preparing Colorado Mesa for the long term. Someone is going to reap the benefits of my endowing 10 full scholarships — the maximum we can have at Division II. 

Dollars will come if they’re available. We’re a little blue-collar at Colorado Mesa, so we have girls willing to work as hard as they can to be part of our program. We’re trying to build a program that people want to be a part of, not how much money they can get. 

Joe Jamison, Ursinus, NCAA Division III

For us, it’s purely merit scholarships based on academics. Every school is different in Division III. It depends on what their transcript looks like, what their course load is, their GPA, their test scores, and if they choose to submit them because they are optional at our school. 

There are additional scholarships they can apply for that the school offers, but none of them are athletic scholarships. The rest of the financial aid package is based on their FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). Any applicant is going to fill out their FAFSA when applying to any school, and then they build their financial aid package based on their FAFSA results. 

Anyone who gets in is guaranteed $35,000. Our high scholarship is $45,000. Those are guaranteed for all four years. The rest of their financial aid package is based on their financial need. It’s roughly $81,000 to attend Ursinus next year. 

We’re going to find the best kids for us, and we’re going to develop them. We are a special place, and it has to be the right fit for the kids, and when it’s the right fit, that’s when they do well. 

Ashley (Sword) Flavin, Life University, NAIA

We look at a couple of different things. Do we need the weight class? Right now, we have the #1 and #2 wrestlers at 110. Do I need the weight class? No, but am I willing to put money into a 110-pounder next year because one will be a senior and the other will be a junior?

Our school doesn’t have many academic scholarships for incoming freshmen. Once you’re here and you prove you can make it through college, there will be some money. We don’t have academic scholarships, but good grades will get you a little bit more money from me since academics are so important to us as a team and our culture.

We’ve got our 10 scholarships, the NAIA limit, but if somebody had a 4.0, none of their scholarship money counts against our limit. I still have to put it into my budget, but none of their money counts against my limit. 

I very rarely give full scholarships. I can count on one hand. 

Let’s say somebody comes in as a walk-on. We’ve had a manager come in as a walk-on, and she was at every 6 a.m. practice. I won’t give her national championship money, but it’s a little. You might come in at a lower amount, and you do the right things, and for us, you can earn it. 

You can also lose it. In the NAIA, a scholarship can change. It’s a year-to-year thing. The NCAA schools aren’t the same there. You won’t lose money because of performance. We’re effort-driven. Sometimes you’re working as hard as you can, and sometimes you don’t come out on top, but there’s that balance.

Big teams work at a discount rate. The walk-ons balance out the scholarship athletes. If you have a 3.75 to a 4.0, nothing counts against you when you step on the mat. 

A 3.5 to 3.75 counts at 50 percent. All NAIA schools fall under an academic excellence program, but it’s about what the school can afford. Every school decides what works best.

I don’t want all of the problems just to have a national championship wrestler on my team. We do better with girls starting without a full scholarship and earning their way up. 

It’s not where you are as a freshman. We’re looking at where you’ll end up as a senior. This is an investment in you as a person. These are your grades. This is all of the things.

There are certain things I expect you to do by yourself, and I’ll help you along the way, but I can’t take it personally if they aren’t doing the right thing, which is tough not to take it personally.

Zak Hensley, Iowa Central, NJCAA

Scholarships are largely determined by your credentials as of right now. When we meet the athlete, we dive into who they are and what they’re about, what makes them tick, what they want out of the college experience, and then you see that number change. We can gauge the resources we are willing to put into these athletes by getting to know them and the type of person they are. 

Maybe they don’t have credentials now, but we look at their work ethic. We can visit a practice, and we can see the potential, and we’re willing to invest more into that athlete that we know will give everything to the program and build that culture. 

At the NJCAA, we get 22 LOIs (Letter of Intent). You can sign 22 athletes to an LOI. Our college has a budget that we can spread out to 22 LOIs. Those 22 would be considered an athletic scholarship kid, and would receive athletic aid, and 22 is the maximum. 

I assume everybody is different, and I assume the amount of dollars invested by every school for women’s wrestling is different. 

You can sign 22 kids to a Letter of Intent, and our college determines how much we can divide among those 22 scholarships. The scholarship dollars will tend to stay the same from year to year.

We are unique. Some parents will ask me questions about the NCAA and NAIA, and I’m not 100 percent certain of all their rules. I wish I had the resources to give 22 full scholarships.