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The MIVA will wait for further clarification from the NCAA before discussing any common practices for its teams to provide an additional $2,000 to full-ride scholarship athletes.
MIVA commissioner Chris Schneider said Monday that there is so much uncertainty on the practical applications of the NCAA’s new scholarship policy that the league will not formally discuss it until there is more information.
The NCAA Division I Board of Directors voted last week to allow schools to give full-scholarship student athletes up to an additional $2,000 for cost-of-living expenses. The NCAA will not require schools to add the benefit, but it did inform conferences to consider common application within their membership.
Once the NCAA releases more information, Schneider said he will arrange a conference call with the seven MIVA teams. He said there is no set date for the conference call but it would likely happen before the end of the 2012 season.
In addition to waiting for more information, Schneider said the MIVA as a one-sport conference it will look towards its member schools’ primary conferences for guidance on common practices of this new policy.
Of the seven MIVA schools only Lewis and Quincy are members of the same primary conference — the Great Lakes Valley Conference, a Division II league. The five other schools and primary conferences include Ohio State from the Big Ten, Ball State from the Mid-American Conference, Loyola from the Horizon league, IPFW from The Summit League and Grand Canyon from The PacWest.
The MIVA is the second men’s volleyball conference to announce it will wait to discuss common practices of schools giving an extra $2,000 to full-ride student-athletes.
The MPSF announced last week that it would not discuss the new policy until its league meeting in January. The MPSF commissioner Al Beaird also stated the federated conference would look for guidance from its five charter conferences — the Big West, Mountain West, Pac-12, Western Athletic and West Coast Conference.
Men’s volleyball is an equivalency sport, which allows the NCAA to place limits on the total financial aid that a school offer in the sport. A men’s volleyball team is limited to 4.5 scholarships.
The MIVA was founded in 1961 and is the oldest men’s volleyball conference in the United States. The conference also won its first NCAA title in May as Ohio State defeated UC Santa Barbara in the championship match.