Ethical Student-Athlete Dilemma: Coaching Character and Discipline in College

Abstract:

This case study is about decisions that are made by coaches and parents before and during college attendance while participating in college athletics. The agreements made at the moment of offering a scholarship to a freshman and her family to leave high school realm and face higher level of education and expectations in college athletics in the sport of soccer. Since the 1999 Soccer World Cup in the United States, this sport has gained many followers and universities have invested in the sport as a means to meet the demand and to balance their athletics compliance with Title IX as this sport carries a higher number of female participants in its rosters and help the balance of schools with football tradition.
Unlike basketball and volleyball, soccer is a sport that offers athletic scholarship in the ratio of percentages. Any freshman can be awarded from 10% to 100% depending on the potential and financial health of the soccer program beyond the coach’s decision on investing on the athlete. Our area under discussion is about a female student-athlete (sa) who accepted a soccer scholarship of almost 50% of tuition and fees from a small NCAA division I school and does not deliver academic and athletic performance at the level of her award on her first year. She faces family financial problems and homesickness in the process. Her father wants more scholarship to help his financial trouble and does not seems to understand the deficit in his daughter’s journey requesting to the coach a break on her standards to fulfill his struggle with sending his daughter back to college in the sophomore year.

Subject:

Science and Technology, Social Sciences

Grade Level:

Post-secondary

Collection:

Connexions