Northwest Arkansas Community College to send out sports survey

BENTONVILLE -- Northwest Arkansas Community College will distribute a survey to students this week to gauge interest in playing for athletic teams sanctioned by the school.

A committee exploring the possibility of offering sanctioned sports reviewed a draft of the survey during its meeting Wednesday. The committee approved the survey with a minor revision.

By The Numbers

Sports Participation

Northwest Arkansas Community College’s Sanctioned Sports Committee compiled information on how many students in Benton and Washington county high schools participate in athletic programs. Here’s what they found, by sport, in order of participation:

• Football: 1,785

• Track and Field (outdoor): 972

• Basketball: 938

• Soccer: 739

• Baseball: 618

• Cross Country: 616

• Cheer: 607

• Volleyball: 436

• Softball: 413

• Tennis: 381

• Track and Field (indoor): 350

• Golf: 310

• Wrestling: 306

• Swimming: 263

• Bowling: 226

• Heptathlon: 6

• Decathlon: 4

Source: Northwest Arkansas Community College

Students will receive the survey today through their college email addresses, said Steven Hinds, director of public relations and marketing. They will have two weeks to complete it.

The committee, led by Board of Trustees member Todd Schwartz, held its fourth meeting since its creation last summer. The committee originally decided to focus on offering baseball and softball on a trial basis, but Schwartz said Wednesday the survey results will guide the committee's work. The group will meet again in a few weeks to analyze the survey data.

"If there's no interest whatsoever, we're done at this point," Schwartz said.

Only two of Arkansas' 22 public community colleges offer sanctioned sports programs. Northwest Arkansas Community College offers several club sports, but nothing that's sanctioned by the college.

The survey is required for the purposes of Title IX, a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program that receives federal money.

Kathryn Birkhead, the college's director for diversity and inclusion and Title IX compliance officer, said going through the process of creating the survey was a learning experience. She now knows the college should have been offering the survey annually because it offers club sports, she said.

A 10 percent response rate on this kind of survey is generally considered good, Birkhead said. It should take students less than five minutes to complete.

"We would consider 800 responses from students to be very good," she said.

The college enrolls around 8,000 part-time and full-time students.

The survey asks students about their age, gender and whether they are employed. It also asks about their typical mode of transportation to attend the college, as well as whether transportation would be an issue if college-sanctioned athletic events took place outside the main campus.

The survey also asks students about their level of participation in 12 sports in high school, then asks them to describe their interest in playing those same sports at the collegiate level. Those sports include baseball, basketball, bowling, cross country, golf, track and field, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, volleyball and wrestling.

Also at Wednesday's meeting, Schwartz reviewed what legislative rules exist for community colleges with sanctioned sports programs. The information was compiled for the committee with the help of state Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs.

The Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board is authorized to limit the amount of money used to support intercollegiate sports programs. Institutions must also assess a student athletics fee to support the programs; that fee is set by each school's board of trustees.

The intercollegiate athletic programs Arkansas community colleges may participate in include basketball, volleyball and those sports traditionally played in the spring, such as baseball and softball.

Community colleges also may have a football team, provided no state money or money derived from property taxes or student fees is used to support the program.

Football didn't make it onto Northwest Arkansas Community College's list of sports on its survey. Jerry Vervack, a committee member, said football is typically played at junior colleges, not community colleges. Besides, maintaining a football team is expensive, he said.

"(Football) is something community colleges have gotten rid of to put money into other sports," Vervack said.

Dave Perozek can be reached at [email protected].

NW News on 01/22/2015

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