Emily Denhart came to DePauw University two and a half years ago with a plan in mind. She was going to be a communications and English writing major. She was going to join a sorority. And she was going to play basketball. After just one season of playing, however, she decided to quit the team and retire from the sport. Denhart is just one of the many cases at DePauw of athletes prematurely quitting a sport prior to graduation.
Although DePauw has not released any official data on athletic retention rate, it is known amongst students that there is a culture of quitting their respective athletic teams. The football team for example has lost 32 players between the beginning of the 2015 season until now. Bill Lynch, head coach of the football team, says that retaining as many players as possible is at the top of the coaching staff’s offseason plan every year.
“We always say ‘our current players are our biggest recruits’ and that is no exaggeration,” Lynch said. “We hate to see kids quit the game they came here to play, but if they believe it is in their best interest to leave the game then we will support them through that process.”
Many players quit for different reasons: some lose the love of the game, others don’t get the playing time they think they deserve. For Denhart, she personally wasn’t prepared for the time commitment of playing basketball. During season, athletes are asked to practice every day, handle other team activities such as watching film, as well as traveling hours for away games in the middle of the week.
“I chose division three because I thought it was going to be less of a time commitment than D2 and D1,” Denhart said. “But it turned out that I was spending hours and hours practicing, watching film, lifting weights and I didn’t have time to get involved in anything else.”
Sophomore Cade Jones came to DePauw with a unique situation. Jones committed to play both football and baseball. Occasionally athletes are able to pull off playing multiple sports here, but Jones came to Greencastle fully prepared to quit one of them after his freshmen year. Now Jones only plays football.
“After high school I didn’t know which sport I wanted to play, and DePauw was one of the only schools that offered me to play both,” Jones said. “So I committed to play both with somewhat of the intention of quitting one if I wanted to get involved with other things on campus. After completing my sophomore football season, I decided I was finding more enjoyment in football than in baseball.”
Jones is happy he chose to play both sports his first year because if he were to play one coming into DePauw, it would have been baseball. Playing both sports gave him the opportunity to figure out which one he enjoyed the most.
“I don’t regret playing baseball for one second,” Jones said. “I was able to meet a lot of amazing kids last year through the team, and now I can be content with my decision of choosing football. If I would’ve come here and only played one of the two, I would’ve always questioned if I would’ve enjoyed the other one more.”
Across all of NCAA Division III athletics, there is a lower retention rate than in bigger divisions, but DePauw suffers from this problem more than other schools. Wabash College, a similar sized school in our same conference and DePauw’s biggest rival in male sports, doesn’t have the best retention rate, but it is better than DePauw’s. Since the beginning of the 2015 season, Wabash has only lost 22 football players.
“I think we’re heading in that direction,” Lynch said. “I think if you check in on our retention numbers in a few years they will be as good as any school in our conference.”
Despite the amount of players who quit their team at DePauw, this athletic program offers an opportunity to meet new people and undergo unique experiences. If it’s even for just a year or two, being an athlete at DePauw is a special opportunity. Even though Denhart wasn’t completely content with her experience of being an athlete, she still recommends anyone to try it if given the opportunity.
“If it wasn’t for basketball, I wouldn’t be at DePauw,” Denhart said. “If I had one piece of advice, it would be to give it a shot. You don’t want to sit back during college and think ‘what if.’”