BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — Men’s and women’s water polo rate at the bottom of a recent National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Research report on the number of Division I Graduate Transfers.
“Graduate transfers” are defined by the NCAA as student-athletes who previously earned a bachelor’s degree and then enrolled during the following academic year as a graduate student at a different Division I college/university. Only Division I student-athletes in an Academic Progress Rate cohort (including most scholarship and recruited student-athletes) were included in the analyses. Further, men’s and women’s cross country were removed from the analyses to avoid double-counting track & field and cross country participants. NCAA Division II and Division III institutions are not factored into the study.
In 2017, the number of graduate transfers in men’s sports is five times what it was in 2011, while the women’s numbers have more than tripled over the same time period. However, the number of graduate transfers is still low relative to the total number of participants in Division I sports. There were only 660 graduate transfers identified in the 2017 APR data out of over 110,000 Division I student-athletes for a rate of 0.6 percent.
Overall, graduate transfers are most prevalent in men’s basketball (2.3 percent of current players are graduate transfers), football, women’s basketball and men’s and women’s track & field.
For example, in 2017 there were 433 men’s graduate transfers. Football (211), basketball (104), track & field (48), baseball (25) and soccer (20) were the only sports to reach the 20 athlete mark, while tennis (8), wrestling (7), golf (4), ice hockey (3), volleyball (2) and skiing (1) also had at least one athlete. Lacrosse, swimming & diving and water polo recorded no graduate transfers last year.
Comparatively, in 2011 there were 80 graduate transfers with track & field (23), football (17), basketball (15), wrestling (6), lacrosse (5), soccer (4), tennis (4), baseball (3), swimming & diving (2) and water polo (1) comprising the total. The one men’s water polo player in 2011 is the only graduate transfer in the sport during the time period of 2011-to-2017.
Over the span of the study, men’s graduate transfers in all Division I sports grew steadily from 2011 (80), to 2012 (123), 2013 (170), 2014 (205), 2015 (249), 2016 (292) prior to a significant spike in 2017 (433),
Similarly, women’s sports experienced growth over the seven year study period rising from 62 (2011), 73 (2012), 82 (2013), 118 (2014), 116 (2015), 151 (2016) and 227 (2017).
Last year, track & field (68), basketball (63) and beach volleyball (22) all broke the 20-athlete mark, with soccer (16), volleyball (11), field hockey (10), golf (9), swimming & diving (8), tennis (6), lacrosse (4), rowing (3), softball (3), rifle (1), ice hockey (1), bowling (1) and fencing (1) also posting at least one graduate transfer. Skiing and women’s water polo were the lone sports not to record a graduate transfer in 2017.
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