This is the second in a series of articles to review Division I proposals for the 2009-10 legislative cycle.

Women’s volleyball student-athletes would no longer be allowed to transfer and immediately compete if the Division I Legislative Council adopts a Mountain West Conference proposal.

The proposal is among several related to Bylaw 14 that the Council will review initially in January.

The Mountain West proposal notes that Academic Progress Rates in women’s volleyball are suffering in part because of the frequency of transfers. The APR measures academic performance by assigning value to student-athletes who are eligible and retained at their institutions. Mountain West officials believe that discouraging transfer, as Proposal No. 2009-65 would do, would require student-athletes to make more thoughtful decisions when making an initial college choice.

The proposal also aims to reduce recruiting improprieties that the Mountain West claims arise when women’s volleyball student-athletes play on club teams outside the NCAA championship season.

Currently, most student-athletes are allowed to transfer once in their four-year athletics career and compete immediately upon arrival at their second institution. However, student-athletes in baseball, basketball, Football Bowl Subdivision football and men’s ice hockey must sit out a year after transferring. Baseball was added to the list recently, the result of an investigation into improving academic performance in that sport. Shortly after an extensive package of reforms – including the elimination of the one-time transfer exception – was adopted in baseball, APRs began to improve.

Other proposals

Another significant proposal comes from the Academics Cabinet and would add requirements to nontraditional coursework done by prospective student-athletes. Proposal No. 2009-64 would require regular interaction between the student and the instructor for teaching, evaluating and assistance in courses used to meet core-course requirements. The measure also would require nontraditional courses to have a defined time for completion.

The cabinet sponsored the proposal as an initial step in its comprehensive review of nontraditional coursework. The cabinet members felt that regular interaction and a specific timeline for completion would help prospective student-athletes be more prepared for college work.

Other proposals of note:

• No. 2009-60, which would make the Division I Initial-Eligibility Waivers Committee the final appellate body for initial-eligibility waivers and the Division I Progress-Toward-Degree Waivers Committee the final appellate body for progress-toward-degree waivers.
• No. 2009-63, which would allow student-athletes to participate in one alumni game, one fund-raising activity or one celebrity sports activity per season without losing a season of competition, provided the event is exempt from the institution’s maximum number of contests or dates of competition.
• No. 2009-66, which would close a loophole that allows tennis student-athletes to receive financial aid from one institution and compete for a second institution during the same academic year. The proposed change would make transfers after the first term of the academic year ineligible for competition until the following academic year if the student-athlete received aid or competed at the first institution.