NCAA revises academic requirement

Jamaican high-school athletes hoping to go on athletic scholarship to colleges in the United States this autumn got good news at the weekend. On Friday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced that it had revised the academic requirements that incoming Division 1 freshman athletes would need to meet to practise and play during the upcoming academic year.

Now there is a waiver for both Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Test (ACT), which are both standardised examinations administered by the College Board and is required to be taken by students seeking admission to undergraduate schools. Student athletes will now not have to submit these scores, and also because of the cancellation of classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, their final-year classwork will be disregarded if they had earned a 2.3 grade point average (GPA) in 10 NCAA-approved core courses before the start of their senior year of high school. But seven of these classes must consist of English, mathematics and the sciences.

VERY CONCERNED

Several of these athletes were very concerned a few weeks ago after not being able to sit the SATs because of COVID-19. One of these athletes was Kingston College’s (KC) long jumper and sprint hurdler Wayne Pinnock, who recently told STAR Sports that his return for a final year of competition at KC was to work on obtaining a high score on the SAT, allowing him to enrol in one of the top Division 1 institutions.

“This is good news for the athletes because if the schools have money and can get them in, it would be great,” University of South Carolina assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Kevin Brown said. “Definitely, once there is money, coaches will take advantage of this. However, the NCAA eligibility is one, but the school admission office is another, so we will just have to wait and see.”

University Clemson Director of Track and Field and Cross Country, Mark Elliott, is taking a cautious and patient approach.

“I’m waiting for our school to issue their response and how that works within our admission standard,” he said. “The NCAA released that [on Friday], so again too early to say. However, that is good for the kids who were waiting to take SAT and ACT.”

Elliott said that there is, however, more than SAT and ACT scores to think about.

“Don’t forget that SAT and ACT are not the only qualification needed for admission as CSEC (Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate) and CAPE (Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination) are still in order,” he said.