When recruits say they want to run track in college, they normally are thinking about doing it at the D1 level. But division 1 track and field is not everything that you are lead to believe. Once you leave the SEC and their friends in the super conferences, a lot of the track athletes in D1 could be swapped out with those from the other divisions and fans wouldn’t notice. Division 3 track and field doesn’t give out any athletic scholarships at all, and they don’t get any television coverage on cable. For the record, D1 doesn’t get that much of either for themselves. But you should not ignore D3 track and field! Because the athletes at that level are way better than you think. If you are serious about getting recruited for track and field, Division 3 might be the best place for you to do it.

How good are Division 3 Track and Field athletes?

People believe that division 3 track and field can’t hold a candle to the division 1 level. But that’s flat out not true and here is the evidence. Individually, any athlete who is a D3 All American, likely could win a conference championship somewhere in D1 right now. Sam Blaskowski of the University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse is proof of this. He was the D3 national champion in the 100 meter dash in 2023. He ran 10.13 which would have gotten him a legitimate shot at making the D1 national meet. In fact, at the USA indoor championship he made the final of the 60 meter dash beating a whole bunch of D1 sprinters to do it. And Sam didn’t even win the 200 meter dash at the D3 championship event outdoors. That would be Cheickna Traore of Ramapo College. He ran 20.25 in the championship race, a time that would have fit right in at the D1 national championships.

I was a recruit who wanted to go division 1 or bust. I refused to listen to any D3 schools who reached out to me, which was a mistake. Haverford College was very serious about recruiting me and I blew them off and simply threw that letter in the trash. Had I known that when I got to D1, that their conference, the Centennial conference, had D3 All Americans in sprinting, I might have reconsidered. Later on I raced against one of them, and lost, which as far as I was concerned was not supposed to happen. The truth is choosing D3 over D1 can be the difference between competing to win championships, and never getting invited to them at the D1 level to begin with. 

D3 only gets more competitive when you leave the sprinting events. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was the national championship team for D3 track and field. That is a school known for a lot of things, but track and field is not one of them. Of course they were number 1 in their D3 region, but had they moved up to D1 they could have easily rated in the top 5 of the Division 1 Northeast region. Keep in mind that they don’t give any athletic scholarships just like everyone else in D3. Ironically the team that was number 1 in that region for D1 was Harvard in the Ivy League, which also doesn’t give scholarships. But UCONN, Syracuse, and Rhode Island all do, and MIT was just about as good as all of them!

Of course there are D3 conferences where a man can win a 100 meter dash without breaking 11 seconds. But that’s not the average. The truth is that the best conferences in D3 could swap out with the worst ones in all of Division 1 and nobody would notice the difference.

When it comes to cross country, we know how good D3 teams actually are in that sport. They race the D1 teams straight up all the time. At the Paul Short Invitational some of the best cross country teams in the nation race against each other. RPI and Johns Hopkins showed up and beat Rutgers, Ohio, Dayton, Central Michigan, and a bunch of other D1 programs that take cross country seriously. The idea that you need scholarship dollars to recruit a talented track team is a lie, no matter how you look at it.

How much scholarship money is there for Division 3?

In regards to scholarship dollars, D3 track and field is not what you think it is financially. Although there aren’t any athletic dollars to go around, it doesn’t affect many of them in recruiting. That’s because only a few athletes in D1 are getting track scholarships anyway. Keep in mind that a men’s team in D1 only gets 12.6 scholarships to give out to their entire team. But the best teams have about 50 men on their roster, so everybody’s not getting a full-ride. D3 schools that are public colleges often have academic scholarships available for in state recruits. So they can still get an affordable education. Sometimes they can even beat what a D1 school has to offer, especially if the D1 school is a private college.

In fact, the best D3 schools in track and field are private colleges that have so much money to give out in financial aid, that if they really want you, they will pay for you. This is true for MIT and Washington University in St. Louis. Those are hard schools to get into academically, but if you can run fast, and you’re really smart, money shouldn’t be an issue when you talk to the coaches.

Is Division 1 more competitive than Division 3? 

The biggest lie of all about D3 versus D1 is that if you go D1 you will have the best chance to be successful and maybe one day make it as far as the Olympic level. If you are not getting recruited by the Texas Longhorns and all their friends in the super conferences, before, then you will find out that D1 is not all its cracked up to be. Some D1 schools don’t even have their own track either indoors or outdoors to practice on. But D3 programs like Moravian College in Pennsylvania have some of the best outdoor facilities you will find in the entire NCAA. They actually host a lot of track meets to make sure they get a chance to show it off. Some D3 schools travel more than smaller D1 programs, and spend way more money on giving their track athletes the best they can.

Nick Symmonds is proof that you can succeed from anywhere. He was actually a D3 runner for Willamette University in the 800 meter. He not only broke the D3 national record, but became an Olympian and World Championship silver medalist in that event. It is true that division 1 track and field is the highest level of college track competition, and if you want to run there and have the talent required to get recruited, you should pursue it. But once you leave the top programs in any Division 1 region, there will be schools even in Division 3 who can compete incredibly well against you. My advice is really a warning. Do not ignore D3 schools, either when you are getting recruited, or when you compete against them. They might not have national television coverage, but neither does almost everyone else in D1. If you are not careful they will show up to your next college track meet and beat you, even without a scholarship to their name.

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