Being “ineligible” is something you should for sure try to avoid at all costs, because it probably means that you have done something wrong or that you were not supposed to do. Now you can become ineligible to compete for your college team in a number of ways, but we will describe the three most common ways in this blog post.
The first and arguably the most common way to become ineligible, is because of your academics. This can happen to you both as an incoming freshman coming out of high school or when you are currently enrolled in college. As an incoming freshman, there are two ways to be ineligible. This can be simply because your high school GPA was too low or because you did not complete the required number of core classes in high school. As a current student athlete in college, the same two can also happen. The only difference there is that you will just need to pass a certain number of credit hours each semester regardless of whether they are core classes. Now, every governing body has slightly different requirements in terms of GPA and classes you need to pass, so that it would take a bit too much time to list all the requirements here, but obviously we are there to help you with these rules throughout the process.
The second way you can become ineligible to compete for your college team is because you violated the governing body’s amateur status rules. Again, same as in the previous paragraph, listing all the rules here would turn this blog post into a multiple page essay, but it basically comes down to whether you have made money as an amateur or not. Now small amounts in most cases are fine and nowadays college athletes are even allowed to make money with their personal name through sponsorships, but there are still some rules in place that everyone needs to follow in order to remain what the NCAA and NAIA consider an amateur.
The last way that can keep you from competing in college for a contest or game, a semester or even a year, is if you simply mess up! Obviously, there are again numerous ways how you can do that, but the most common ones here are taking illegal substances, getting in trouble with the law, or other disciplinary reasons such as unsportsmanlike conduct during a game or during a college sponsored function.
We know that this can sound scary and intimidating to some of you, but like we always say, if you take care of your stuff and do what you are supposed to do, you will be fine. So there should not be much to worry about and to be honest these cases happen very rarely. If you have any questions about any of these eligibility rules or about the differences between the governing bodies, feel free to reach out to us and we will go over it with you!