Available Soccer Scholarships

Unlike football and basketball, college soccer is an "equivalency sport." That means partial athletic scholarships in soccer are more likely to be awarded than full rides, according to collegesportsscholarships.com. NCAA regulations allow each Division 1 soccer program to have 9.9 full scholarships for men and 12 for women. In Division II, the ratio is nine scholarships for men and 9.9 for women. College soccer coaches also are more likely to base a scholarship on a player's club team performance than on his high school varsity resume.

  1. Olympic Development

    • According to collegesportsscholarships.com, college-bound players have little chance of getting scholarship money if they are not in an Olympic Development program. Teams are organized by age, gender and region. Teams can compete in tournaments against teams from other states. Tryouts are supposed to be open and advertised in local newspapers. The height of the tournament season is the summer, when college coaches are more available to recruit. However, most teams practice year-round and complete in indoor soccer tournaments in the winter.

    Colleges and Universities

    • The NCAA has a web listing of every Division I, II and III school with a men's or women's soccer program. The NCAA restricts athletic scholarships to Division I and II schools, although some Division III schools can offer financial aid packages that factor in athletic participation. However, every Division I and Division II school does not have scholarship money for soccer. In soccer, it's not unusual for entire conferences to not have any scholarship players. Some schools that compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) also have scholarship money.

    Tournaments

    • The most competitive tournaments for teenage traveling and Olympic Development teams are known as college soccer showcase tournaments. That's because college coaches usually attend and college coaches are often involved with organizing them.