Sporting Chance - Scholarships and Professionalism

The number of sports scholarships is increasing steadily in higher education institutions throughout Ireland. School leavers who excel at sport (avid Sky Sports viewers and tiddlywinks champs not included) and wish to continue training and playing at a serious level during their third level education have many options to consider when making their CAO application. All institutes of technology and universities now provide a form of sports scholarship.

Student support services available to scholars vary widely – besides the traditional bursary (anything from €500 to €2,000 usually), many scholarships include supports such as accommodation, travel costs, personal coaching, nutritional advice and physiological assessment, as well as the money. Prospective students are well advised to contact the respective sports departments of the institutions that interest them, and inquire as to what exactly is provided to the student through the scholarship.

It is certainly worth ‘shopping around’ as a growing number of sports are available outside the old favourites such as athletics, football, GAA (football, camogie, hurling) and rugby. These include canoeing at DCU, clay pigeon shooting in DIT, windsurfing at NUI Galway, martial arts in IT Carlow, and snooker at NUI Maynooth. 
 
Application for most scholarships is done after the student has landed a place in the college through the standard CAO process. Increasingly however, in a reflection of the growing regard for sporting success in Irish higher education, in limited cases students are not assessed solely by their CAO points tally alone, but by sporting achievement also in applying for a scholarship. NUI Maynooth, DCU (Elite Sportspersons Entry Scheme), and UCD (for the Sports Management Diploma only) are three institutions that offer limited places in this concessionary manner to the most talented athletes. These direct entry programme (i.e. outside the CAO process) are designed to cater for top athletes whose CAO points tally may have suffered due to intense training commitments.

Traditionally, the most gifted Irish sportspeople, such as former world champion runner Eamonn Coghlan and Olympic gold medallist Ronnie Delaney, had to travel to American colleges to avail of a scholarship. With Irish colleges at last coming round to the idea that investment in sport is a win-win situation – excellent publicity for the institution and greater sports facilities for the student population – Irish athletes need no longer cross the Atlantic in such numbers. They can pursue their sporting dreams and simultaneously attain qualifications for a career (inside or outside the realm of sport and fitness) in an Irish setting.

Successful examples of this change include such nationally and internationally known sports stars as inter-county Gaelic footballers Conal Keaney (IT Tallaght) and Seamus Moynihan (UCC); international sprinters Derval O’Rourke (UCD) and Paul Hession (NUI Galway); inter-county hurlers Joe Deane (UCC) and Henry Shefflin (Waterford IT); footballers Seamus Conneely of Galway Utd and Ireland U21s (NUI Galway) and Ronan Finn of Sporting Fingal and Ireland U21s (UCD); and international rugby players Brian O’Driscoll (UCD) and Paul Wallace (UCC). It that bunch are not sufficiently inspiring to you, nobody is!

Just remember that taking up a scholarship will require a serious commitment to your sport – no easy thing when you have to overcome the same academic challenges faced by every other student too.

Visit www.cusai.ie for more information about competitive sport in Ireland’s colleges and universities.