INTERACTIVE – The NAIA Eligibility Game

RELATED COLUMN – Lauren Bechard discusses her own issues with NAIA eligibility

With the season fast approaching, the reality of beginning his final year of college football was starting to sink in for senior running back Kyle Rooks.

After a long summer of morning lifts and grueling workouts, Rooks was confident and more than ready to help lead the Wildcats to a successful year. Expectations were high for Baker football this year and Rooks was excited to end his career on a positive note.

Anticipation was building and just two weeks before the team’s season opener, Rooks was driving to the market with his girlfriend when he got a text message from his coach calling him into the office.

The meeting with Baker head football coach Mike Grossner left the hopeful senior devastated.

Rooks learned that the NAIA Eligibility Center had deemed him ineligible and he was no longer able to play.

With the formation of the NAIA Eligibility Center just two years ago, many Baker student-athletes have encountered these types of issues with eligibility.

Prior to the creation of the Eligibility Center, each NAIA institution was responsible for determining the eligibility for its own student-athletes. This responsibility fell on the athletic director and the faculty athletic representative at each institution.

“It was our responsibility to look through transcripts and to find hours and to talk to students,” Baker Athletic Director Theresa Yetmar said. “And really, if you think about two people trying to do the job of managing 450-plus student-athletes, the amount that that can be researched is obviously much less than a whole eligibility center.”

NAIA developed the Eligibility Center to create a single entity in charge of eligibility for every NAIA student-athlete. Kay Hawes, director of marketing and public relations for the NAIA, described the Eligibility Center as a “one-stop shop” that allows there to be a single standard for eligibility requirements across the NAIA resulting in fair play among participants.

“It used to be a more autonomous system where decisions might vary by conference or by institution, and now the NAIA Eligibility Center provides a consistent decision overall for the entire association on each prospective student athlete,” Hawes said.

During the NAIA registration process, the student must submit all of his or her student records such as transcripts from high school and previous institutions and test scores. Once this is done, the Eligibility Center can start its determination process.

Manager of Eligibility Services Nikki Vandepopulier says a determination for a student-athlete coming straight out of high school usually only takes about three days, but a determination for a transfer student may take significantly longer.

“For a transfer student or a student who may have taken time off… we have to research what they have done both academically and athletically. Sometimes this holds the process up,” Vandepopulier said.

Once a determination has been made, the NAIA will alert the student-athlete as well as the institution through email.

The transition to this new eligibility process has resulted in difficulties for many Baker student-athletes.

Rooks was informed of his ineligibility a few weeks before the team’s first game against rival Ottawa University. He was declared ineligible because a student-athlete has 10 semesters to complete his or her 4 years of competition in a particular sport, and this fall is his 11th semester.

“What we originally thought was that since I transferred from a junior college and some of my credits didn’t transfer over, I would be deemed a part-time student at the junior college, but the NAIA ruled that it didn’t count how many credits transferred but how many you attempted,” Rooks said. “And since I attempted over 12 hours I was deemed a full-time student even though the credits didn’t count so that put me over by one semester.”

With the responsibility of the student-athlete’s eligibility being moved to the NAIA, Rooks was not aware of the problem until it was too late. Had he been made aware of this issue earlier, Rooks would have been able to take off the previous spring semester and been able to compete in the fall this year.

This issue may be a result of the large volume of students the Eligibility Center has to process each season. The domestic applicant eligibility team is made up of 50 members, 15 full-time and 35 seasonal, and according to Hawes, the Eligibility Center processed over 25,000 student-athletes this fall alone.

Because of the large amount of determinations that must be made by the Eligibility Center, it has resulted in more responsibility for the student-athletes than they have had in the past.

“In theory while it was supposed to make the process of eligibility easier, what we have found is it has increased the workload not only for students but for our coaching staff and for our faculty athletic rep,” Yetmar said. “So as a student you have to take responsibility and constantly check on your status.”

Baker head volleyball coach Kathy Allen has also felt the increased workload with the implementation of the Eligibility Center

“It’s a lot more complicated. There is a lot more to do and a lot more planning. And there are a lot of things that come right down to the wire,” Allen said.

Another Baker student-athlete that may have suffered from the large number of athletes being processed by the Eligibility Center is junior soccer transfer Preston Phillips.

Phillips transferred to Baker this fall from the University of Texas at Tyler and finished the NAIA registration process in late August, but did not receive a determination until the end of September. What seemed like a routine determination for a transfer student turned into a month long process.

Phillips was not cleared by the NAIA until the 10th game of the season which meant he missed all of the preseason games. Although he knew the process would take some time, he did not anticipate it taking half the regular season.<br/>

Junior volleyball transfer Lauren Bechard also had issues with the eligibility process.

Bechard transferred from Kansas State University this fall, but did not play volleyball there. She began the transfer process in November of 2011 and finished by the end of spring 2012, however Bechard did not find out she was ineligible until hours before the team’s first game in August.

The NAIA Eligibility Center ruled Bechard ineligible because it determined she was not a full-time student for the two semesters prior to her transferring to Baker. Bechard had repeated a class from the fall in the spring to boost her GPA and the NAIA said that this negated the units from the first time she took it, putting her under 12 units and full-time status for fall 2011.

The issue here was that had Bechard been notified earlier that she was ineligible, she would have been able to take summer classes so that she could be eligible to play this fall.

Bechard as well as Rooks and Phillips are not alone in their difficulties with the new eligibility process. The NAIA and participating institutions are also dealing with the transition process and are working to make it more swift and efficient.

“There has been a transition period for sure,” Yetmar said. “If you talk to (athletic directors) in the NCAA they will say they still don’t have the process right. That it’s still evolving… and they’re still learning. If you think about how long they’ve been doing it and the fact that we started doing it, we are absolutely still at the infancy phase.”

Despite the difficulties, Allen believes that the Eligibility Center is a step forward for the NAIA and a positive change.

“However, they (Eligibility Center) are new and they are getting it done. I think it is a good thing for NAIA sports to have,” Allen said.

As the new eligibility process becomes more familiar to the NAIA, institutions, and students, the hope is that there will be fewer issues with future student-athletes.