Reader Forum Part IIIAthlete Retention

As the last post was on recruiting, I think that this subject is especially appropriate.This past season, Ferrum had several football players, who would have seen significant playing time, that choose not to return. While there may have been different reasons for their not returning, I expect that the economic slowdown may have affected this. My guess is that Ferrum is not the only school that had this problem. While it is legitimate to look to the poor economy as a culprit, this situation seems to happen somewhat regularly.

There are 47 Freshmen listed on the 2009 Ferrum roster. I decided that I would try to see if there is a trend over the years. I went to each conference schools football website, and looked to see if they kept a historical record of their football rosters. Of the eight schools, five of them kept a record. I was able to go back to 2007 rosters for four of the teams (Ferrum, Methodist, CNU, and Greensboro), and was able to pull the 2008 and '09 roster for Averett. My goal was to track the freshmen class on the oldest roster for the football team, and just see how their numbers changed in the following seasons. While this is not an exact science, it does show a trend that I think exists pretty much across the conference. Here is how the numbers broke down:

Ferrum College-

2007 Freshmen 49
2008 Sophomores 19
2009 Juniors 12


Methodist University

2007 Freshmen 49
2008 Sophomores 23
2009 Juniors 11

Greensboro College

2007 Freshmen 25
2008 Sophomores 13
2009 Juniors 16*

Christopher Newport University

2007 Freshmen 41
2008 Sophomores 25
2009 Juniors 25

Averett University

2008 Freshmen 35
2009 Sophomores 22

A couple of interesting things about these figures are that Greensboro gained three players between 2008 and 2009, and Christopher Newport maintained the same number between the Sophomore and Junior seasons. Beyond those two discrepancies, I think the trend is a significant loss of players as the years go on. Especially after their first season. Some reasons for this may be:



Inadequate playing time

Injury related vacancies

Academic ineligibility

Disciplinary reasons


The list could go on and on, but a consistent roster is a building block to success. The more consistent the roster, the more experienced the team, and the more competitive they will be. So the forum question is:

What steps can be taken either from a conference level, or by individual institutions to retain football players?