This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Only a lucky few Utah high school athletes get scholarships to play at the next level.
More boys received scholarships for playing football than any other sport. According to Utah High School Activities Association statistics on 2014 graduating seniors, 33 of the 2,332 who participated in football earned Division I scholarships, while 85 other students earned scholarships to smaller schools. The best percentage for girls was percent 12.7 percent for soccer, with 105 of the 822 participants earning a scholarship including 37 in Division I.
Baseball offered the best odds for a boys' scholarship at 6.85 percent, with 61 of the 890 participants earning some sort of aid. That was followed by soccer at 5.58 percent, football at 5 percent, basketball at 2.58 percent, golf as 2.2 percent, cross country and track at 1.81 percent, wrestling at 1.8 percent, tennis at .83 percent and swimming at .21 percent.
On the girls' side, 9.76 percent received softball scholarships, followed by 5.76 for volleyball, 5.43 for basketball, 4.02 for cross country and track, 3.6 for golf, 1.73 for swimming and .40 for tennis.
Nationally, 3.2 percent of men's basketball players earned scholarships, with 1.2 percent of those moving on to play professionally. In women's basketball, 3.6 percent received scholarships; 6.1 percent of football players, 6.6 percent of baseball players; 10.7 percent of men's ice hockey players, and 5.7 percent of men's soccer players earned scholarships.
On a national level, the highest percent of players moving from NCAA to the pros was in baseball, where 11.6 percent made that jump.
– Tom Wharton