Sports

out $4,000 more than we probably
should.” According to Baxter, the
Ontario university presidents believed
that the Canadian cut off was too
low for proceeding athletes, so they
raised it to 7O per cent. “That's the
benchmark and it’s 7O per cent as
you go through. The rest of the country
is 605 [per cent], which is the CIS rule.
But it’s the Ontario presidents that
said the academic standard of 65

is not good enough,’ he said. Both
Baxter and Giles expressed that due
to the restriction of $4,000 given to
a potential athlete, this causes issues
in recruitment in Ontario. “You can
only give them the most you can give
them,’ Giles said. “Often that's the
situation and it comes down to where
do you really want to go to school?”

Currently, according to Giles and

the 2011-12 AFA report, McMaster
University sits with the highest total
AFA equivalency provided in the QUA,
with an equivalency of 669 per cent.
“If you look, we are now number

one in Ontario for AFAs. And that
was a decision we made two years
ago, Giles said. “We wanted to up
our game in terms of compete-level
and we wanted to recruit better, and
in order to recruit better, we had to
give out more AFAs."The next highest
university in Ontario is the University
of Windsor with 61.7 AFA equivalency
provided. Laurier provides 43.0,
according to the AFA report.

The lowest university in Ontario is Trent
University, who only provided O.7 AFAs
in the 201-12 documented year. “It's
an uneven playing field, and so it's
very frustrating, but all we can do is be
competitive within Ontario and let the

rest of the country do what they do,”
Giles said.

Comparing the country:

Depending on the area and
conference of the school, total AFAs
can be incredibly skewed. According to
the 2011-12 AFA report, the university
that provided the highest total AFA
equivalency in Canada was the
University of Manitoba in Winnipeg,
MB, which provided 123 AFAs in 2011-
12. As mentioned earlier, the lowest
came from Ontario's Trent University,
which provided only 0.7 AFAs. By
conference, the numbers are a bit
closer.

In the QUA, as mentioned, McMaster
University provided the most AFAs with
669 and Trent supplied the lowest,
against with 07. In the Réseau du

sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ), the
Université Laval in Laval, OC, provided
a total of 67.2 AFAs in 2011-12, while
the Université du Québec a Montréal
in Montreal, OC gave only 11.1 AFAs.
McGill University gave out 569 AFA
equivalencies; however, according to
Love, McGill also has 29 varsity teams.
In the Atlantic University Sport (AUS)
conference, there is an even larger
skew between the highest and lowest
AFAs given out. Acadia provided the
most AFAs in 2011-12 with 72.6, while
Mount Allison University in Sackville,
NB, gave out only 10.3. Finally, in the
Canada West University Athletics
Association (CWUAA) conference, the
numbers are substantially higher. The
University of Manitoba, as mentioned,
gave 123 AFAs last year, while the
lowest, Thompson Rivers University in

Kamloops, BC, provided 24.2.

While these numbers are dramatically
skewed, it is important fo remember
that athletic scholarships can be

as much as full tuition and as little

as a small margin of the full tuition,
depending on the school. Kevin Dickie,
director of athletics at Acadia University
in Wolfville, NS., John Richard, director
of athletics at the University of New
Brunswick in Fredericton, NB, and Love
all mentioned that at least half of their
student athletes receive some form

of AFA. “And again, the level of the
AFA would be all over the map, right
from a nominal amount right up to ful
tuition and fees, which is obviously the
most you can award under the CIS
regulations,” Richard said.

But while most schools can confidently
say that their AFA amount reaches
50 per cent of their student athletes,
most cannot say the same about the
distribution between genders.

Gender imbalance:

According to the 2011-12 AFA report, a
lot of schools do not provide the same
athletic funding to both males and
females. Some schools have the issue
of dealing with the high demands of a
varsity football team, while for others it
depends on the personal team budget
and how they allocate it. According to
Baxter, naturally the CIS tries to get

as close to a 50 per cent split of funds
between males and females. “When
you distribute it, it has fo go between
a ten per cent window,” Baxter said.

However, the AFA report displays
incredibly skewed ratios. “We try to
keep it balanced between male and
female, and some of us do a better

job of that than others,” Giles said.
“Because [McMaster has] football,

it adds a real challenge for us.”
Currently, the AFA equivalency ratio
— in percentage — at McMaster is
63 per cent to 37 per cent in favour
of males. Laurier’s ratio is 56 per

cent to 44 per cent, also in favour of
males. The biggest issue in distributing
the funds equally is football. Football
naturally has about 90 student
athletes, with about 47 receiving some
type of funding, and is one of the
biggest recruiting classes and sports in

the CIS.

As a result, a large portion of AFAs
and athletic scholarships are put
toward football. In fact, according to
the second portion of the AFA report,
the total dollar value in 201-12 toward
men's football was $2,082,623. The
average award value of a football
AFA recipient was approximately
$3,568 — the highest of all sports in
the CIS. The next closest dollar amount
in athletic scholarships provided is

men’s hockey at $1,752,211.

The highest women’s sport is women’s

basketball, which received $1,241,575
in AFAs in 2011-12. “The greatest
difference is, if you took men’s hockey
and men’s football out [of Albertal,
wed be skewed in favour of women,”
Spriggs explained. “But we've had our
men’s hockey and football teams for
over 100 years.” Alberta's ratio in the
2011-12 report was 63 per cent to 37
per cent in favour of males.

However, Spriggs also explained that
the Alberta's athletics department is
working toward finding a solution to
the major skew. “We're doing some
internal proactive measures [to bring
it evenl. We're dedicating some funds
that would be otherwise open to

all to women; also we've had some
fundraising initiatives for female
athletes.” At McMaster, Giles is even
considering adding a new program
on the women’s side just to even out
the skewed funds toward the men. The
total dollar amount in 2011-12 for men

was $7,432,486, while the total dollar
amount for women was $5,299,704.

The biggest gender imbalance in the
AFA funds, however, was reported
from Laval University. In 2011-12, Lavall’s
ratio was 80 per cent in favour of

men and only 20 per cent in favour

of women. This could be attributed

to the use of recruitment tools at

Laval, especially for their consistently
dominant football program. “The

15

other consideration in sports is that
you're going to get a return on your
investments, Dickie said. “You can't be
all things fo all people; dollars are hard
to come by.” “It depends on the sport.
In some cases you don't have to offer a
lot of AFAs to get the best athletes and
in some cases you do. It depends sport
by sport,” Giles echoed.

However, there are a few schools
that reported not having an issue with
the gender imbalance. Most notably
was Queen's University in Kingston,
Ont, which was reported perfectly
even at a 5O per cent balance in
2011-12. Queen's was the only school
to be entirely even in the CIS. The
next closest was Ryerson University

in loronto, Ont, which has a 51 per
cent to 49 per cent ratio in favour of
females — one of very few in the CIS.

Recruitment and retention:

Although there are still issues for
universities to figure out when it

comes to allocating funds from athletic
scholarships, all athletic directors
agree that they are significant tools for
recruitment in athletics. ‘It's significant
for sure and it's a constant challenge
for us and most schools in Canada,”
Richard said. “Obviously we're all
striving fo continue to grow our athletic
awards and | think it’s important that
we do because the student athletes
are spending so much time doing it,”
Love said.

As tuition in Canada continues to
increase, so does the demand for
athletic scholarships and AFAs. Athletes
work to maintain their scholarships to
play at a reputable school, which puts
money towards its athletics. According
to Spriggs, the majority of recruitments
can decide what school they'd like

to attend when they're told “up front
what to expect.” This could mean their
expected amount in money, the added
bonus of staying local or a use of funds
in retention methods.

[Alberta is] in favour of using athletic
scholarships as a means of supporting
student athletes,” she said. But, as
Giles put it, these AFAs and athletic
scholarships come down to one thing
for both the student athlete and the
university athletics program — success.
‘Like most schools, we play CIS sports
to compete and do well, you don't
compete to be average,” he said. “So
if increasing AFAs for a coach that says
they'll do better and recruit better and
have a better performance, then we
can do that.”