Hamilton, NESCAC peers lag behind in diversity in Division III Athletics
By Grace Myers ’19, Sports Editor
Diversity, in all its forms, has been an essential goal of the College in recent years, and will be an important part of its future. Schools across the country are realizing that communities in higher education fail to reflect the nation’s demographics, and that predominantly white institutions (PWIs) can be intimidating for students of color. Achieving greater economic diversity is another goal of many schools, as a student’s socioeconomic background can be a hurdle for many students when evaluating if and where they go to college. And while women attend college in greater proportions than men do, they still are not close to achieving equality in leadership positions in collegiate athletics or higher education. A college or university with students from similar economic and demographic backgrounds runs the risk of reducing the breadth of experiences students can share and thus the amount of unique perspectives available to the community.
Making diversity a priority in shaping a college’s class is not a new concept, and it is one that Hamilton’s Office of Admissions has taken seriously. The results are encouraging — the Class of 2022 is the most diverse in Hamilton’s history — but the class is still not fully representative of the diversity of undergraduate students in this country. However, a large part of the college experience revolves around an area that lags even further behind in diversity efforts: athletics. Hamilton’s varsity athletics program is less diverse than the overall student body by a significant margin, and so this leads to the important question: what is causing this lack of diversity at Hamilton? Further, what is being done to change these disappointing demographics?
27 percent of students in the Class of 2022 identify as people of color. This is below the nationwide statistic of 44 percent of college students who identify as people of color (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Athletics are even less diverse at Hamilton and other New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) schools as a group. NESCAC schools compared to national averages are overwhelmingly white and wealthy. This is reflected in athletics; roughly 33 percent of NESCAC football players are people of color, while the number is 37 percent for players across all Division III football programs (NCAA). This is just one example; nearly every sport in the NESCAC is less diverse compared to Division III athletics as a whole.
A cause of this problem, or perhaps a symptom of it, is the lack of diversity in coaching staffs and administrators. At Hamilton, only one head coach — women’s basketball coach Mahogany Green — out of 32 varsity teams is a person of color. Men’s and women’s golf coach Lauren Cupp is the first female in the College’s history to head the coaching staff of a men’s sport. These statistics are on par with the NESCAC as a whole in terms of coaching staff diversity and does not reflect the diverse demographics of available coaches across Division III.
Strides, however, are being made in addressing this lack of diversity. Athletic Director Jon Hind ’80 has introduced concrete measures to make coaching more accessible for women, such as providing allowances for new mothers to take their children with them while on away trips. Additionally, it is worth noting that the athletic administration is more diverse than the department’s coaching staff, including administrators in top roles —Associate Director of Athletics/Senior Woman Adminstrator Miriam Merrill is a person of color, and Hind originally came to Hamilton as a student through an economic opportunity program.
“[Diversity] is important to me,” said Hind. “To know history and context is important in knowing where someone comes from. When I came to Hamilton in 1976, I was part of the opportunity program. I came from an inner-city school and [the opportunity program meetings] are where I met my classmate Phyllis [Breland, current Director of Opportunity Programs at Hamilton]. I am very tuned in to being around diverse populations. I have learned the value of diversity in athletics and academics through my growing experiences. That’s part of why I take this so seriously.” Hind and Merrill have put into place a plan to increase diversity in athletics and to determine why Hamilton has fallen short in the past in finding intelligent, capable student-athletes and coaches from diverse backgrounds.
Understanding where Hamilton can improve in its recruitment processes begins with an understanding of the NESCAC recruitment and its limitations. As a member school, Hamilton is bound by the rules set by the conference. The NESCAC is relatively unique in that it has a presidentially-driven structure, and so all rules must be agreed upon by the member school presidents. Prior rules heavily restricted recruitment budgets. For example, in 2006, the budget cap was $200 per team. This cap, though gradually raised until 2016, meant that schools were extremely limited in their recruiting; it was difficult for coaches to go far geographically to find student athletes, much less outside of New York State. Likewise, students could only speak with coaches while on campus, which placed an unfair economic burden upon underprivileged students who wished to pursue varsity athletics at Hamilton. Other regulations made recruiting difficult, such as the rules that coaches could neither talk to students outside of the summer, nor within their school during school hours.
In 2016, the athletic directors in the NESCAC presented a series of complaints, including those mentioned in this article, to the NESCAC presidents, urging them to consider the demographic ramifications of these restrictive measures. Students who would not otherwise know about Hamilton, many of whom are people of color, had no way to know whether their athletic abilities qualified them to be at Hamilton. Coaches also had no way to make these students aware of Hamilton. As a result, some of these restrictions were relaxed; coaches can now talk to students during times other than summer, and the budget cap on recruiting has been increased.
Schools immediately took advantage. Bowdoin College’s recruiting budget increased 162 percent between the 2015–2016 season and the 2016–2017 season according to The Bowdoin Orient. With that being said, although the NESCAC has made changes that will help coaches appeal to a wider range of high school student-athletes, these rules are still not as relaxed as other conferences within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Division III.
While Hind said that these changes are essential in beginning to make the athletics program more inclusive and diverse, he also noted the cultural nature of some sports. Citing a sport like hockey, which is more popular among rich, white demographics–both in participation and viewership, according to The Atlantic–he acknowledged that some sports are already fairly representative of the number of students playing them on a national scale. Out of 515 ice hockey players of all genders in the NESCAC, only 37 were people of color, a paltry rate of just 7 percent, according to the NCAA. Interestingly, this rate is nearly identical to the rate of people of color playing on the national level in the National Hockey League.
For other sports, such as football, the NESCAC reflects no such reality. Nearly 70 percent of NFL players are people of color, according to ESPN, and yet about half of that percentage plays Division III football (NCAA). This, Hind says, is where diversity in athletics is failing. “The best success we can have is when we’re representative of the rest of the college,” he says. “I think we run into problems as a school and a program if we become misrepresentative.”
Likewise, economic diversity is essential in fostering an open minded athletic and collegiate community. The disadvantages that low-income students face in pursuing athletic interests starts young; a child from a family that makes above $100,000 annually is three times more likely to play sports than a child from a family that makes below $25,000 annually (The Atlantic). Children who play in travel sports leagues can expect their families to pay an average of $2,266 on sports participation annually, an average which encompasses all sports (University of Florida’s Sport Policy Research Collaboration, 2014). Equipment costs can keep children off of the field, and so college athletic departments simply see fewer low-income applicants, particularly for expensive sports such as lacrosse and ice hockey.
For underserved children who manage to pursue and afford sports until the collegiate level, barriers continue. Hind notes that spring and winter training trips and unexpected costs such as broken or worn cleats can pose a significant barrier for some students from low-income backgrounds. In those cases, he says, the athletic department works with the student to determine sources of funding. In rare occasions, the funding comes from the department itself. The most important thing, Hind stresses, is that students should not have to stop playing sports once at Hamilton just because they cannot afford participation. That, he says, is not inclusion.
Making Hamilton an attractive and inclusive place for all, regardless of socioeconomic status or race, is clearly an important goal. It is equally important to ensure that underrepresented groups on campus feel welcomed and integral to the community once they commit to Hamilton. The Dean of Students office issued a survey at the end of the 2016–2017 academic year that found that many people of color, including student-athletes, did not feel connected to the Hamilton community as a whole. Merrill, the assistant athletic director, feels as though the athletic department can do a better job at making students feel part of the larger community even within athletics, especially given that a third of all students are varsity athletes, a community in itself. She has worked with the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) to create a dialogue with student-athletes of color. Merrill hopes that these conversations will continue. Hind also said that he feels as though diversity is important not only for creating team cohesiveness and diversity of thought, but also because it provides learning opportunities for players. In his opinion, everyone benefits from being on a team with a variety of outlooks, opinions and backgrounds.
Both Hind and Merrill emphasize their open-door policy. They are considering programming for all incoming athletes which would encourage a conversation about diversity within teams, and they are working with the office of the Dean for Diversity and Inclusion to determine how and what to impart to coaches and players about diversity. Efforts both within the college and the NESCAC as a whole have provided an encouraging start to addressing the lack of diversity in athletics. As Hind puts it, his ultimate goal is to have a robust and representative student-athlete body, and he believes that the department is on its way to this goal. However, he says, “we need to do better.”
