Match Awards for Juniors and NCAA Eligibility?

[Orpanaut]

I am trying to get my children involved in competitive shooting and I am wondering if anyone here is familiar with what sort of awards a junior can receive while still remaining eligible to eventually compete at the collegiate level.

More specifically, I am wondering...

1) Does it matter whether awards are in the form of money or NRA award points?

2) Would awards from one shooting sport, like NRA Conventional Pistol, impact eligibility for another, like ISSF Sport PIstol?

[PaulB]

First, this is to the best of my knowledge. I am a college coach but not an NCAA coach. Also, over the years the rules have changed several times.

The NCAA rules only apply to those schools that recognize shooting as a varsity sport at their school. The rifle schools can be found in this table:

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/rifle/TeamAgg2-12.pdf

Some schools are listed more than once since they may have a men's team, a women's team and/or a mixed team.

A couple schools have varsity pistol teams and maybe a couple have varsity shotgun teams.

If you shoot at a school that has a non-varsity team, or club team, then the NCAA rules do not apply.

The rules on awards for someone shooting in a NCAA program are pretty simple. For each match that you shoot (as I understand it, in ANY shooting sport) before you go to college you can accept pretty much any awards as long as the value of the awards received in that match does not exceed the actual cost of participating in that match (travel, motel, entry fees, ammo). You cannot "write off" a portion of the cost of your equipment. You should keep decent records of the expenses and the awards in case there are any questions. There might be some type of exception for high level awards, like the Olympics, where the USOC gives large cash awards for medal winners (maybe for divisions II and III, but not for div. I)

http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/pub ... amateurism

Another thing that is a little unusual is that rifle is an all division sport, i.e., divisions I, II and III compete in the same NCAA championship since there are not enough schools for separate championships. I am not exactly sure if this affects the award accepting rules or not.

http://www.nmnathletics.com/fls/22200/C ... %20FAQ.pdf

[Orpanaut]

Thank you, PaulB. That was just the sort of information I wanted.

[randy1952]

I am trying to get my children involved in competitive shooting and I am wondering if anyone here is familiar with what sort of awards a junior can receive while still remaining eligible to eventually compete at the collegiate level.

More specifically, I am wondering...

1) Does it matter whether awards are in the form of money or NRA award points?

2) Would awards from one shooting sport, like NRA Conventional Pistol, impact eligibility for another, like ISSF Sport PIstol?

The rules used to be pretty vague and not very specific, so we used to not give out even NRA Award points to shooters just in case it was every called into question. However, the rules have gotten more specific and if I interpret the current rules correctly award points are okay. Money can affect a person eligibility, but if you read the rules it lays what money is acceptable ie money for travel or entry fees. As the person suggested read the rules to make sure.