NCAA Agrees to Grant Extra Year of Eligibility to Spring Student Athletes

[1972Shocker]

NCAA Agrees to Grant Extra Year of Eligibility to Spring Student Athletes

So for the Shocker women this will effect the following sports:
Women's Golf - 1 senior
Women's Tennis - 7 seniors
Softball - 3 seniors
Women's Track & Field - 5 seniors

Women's Golf:
Not a big impact on the Shocker golf program next year but could make a difference a couple years down the road. The Shockers have signed 1 freshman for next year.

Women's Tennis:
A very senior laden roster with 7 seniors on the 10 player roster. I would not expect all 7 would want to return. Maybe 4 at the most.would want to come back for another season. The fact that most are foreign players makes that difficult to predict. To the best of my knowledge the Shockers have signed 2 freshman so far.

Softball:
The 3 seniors are Madison Perrigan, Bailey Lange and Ryleigh Buck. All key contributors on the Shocker team. Madison Perrigan was chasing the career home run record of 39 and the career RBI record of 153 this season. When the season was called about halfway through (27 games in) Madison had 7 home runs and 20 RBI raising her career totals to 37 home runs and 134 RBI. It will be intereting to see if these ladies decide to come back next year if those numbers will count of if Madison will have to reset at 30 home runs and 114 RBI to begin next year.

This past November Head Coach Kristi Bredbenner announced the signing of am 8 player recruiting class to join the 6 freshman on this year's class. So if everyone returns and all the recruits show up that would give the Shockers a 14 player freshman class next year. The dugout was already getting a bit crowded with 3 seniors scheduled to depart and 8 incoming recruits.

Women's Track & Field: This will be interesting. Is the extra year of eligibility only for the Outdoor Track & Field season in the Spring or does that extend to XC in the fall and Indoor Track & Field in the winter. My guess it will only apply to the Outdoor season in the Spring. All 5 of the Shocker seniors are redshirt seniors. The biggest name being Rebekah Topham. Also on that list are Alex Adams, Claudia Rojo, Shania Vannoster, Alexi Whately. The Shockers also have 23 other athletes on their roster who have already taken redshirt years, Not sure how many of these athletes will want to stay around to compete in one more Outdoor season. Certainly will not be everybody. Rebekah Topham may very well come back for another Outdoor season next year.

[1972Shocker]

Taylor Eldridge: The careers of WSU spring seniors hang in the balance

The fate of 32 senior student-athletes playing spring sports at Wichita State will be decided Monday, when the NCAA Division I Council Committee votes to determine if they will be eligible to complete their final seasons next spring.

The promising news is that the NCAA Division I Council Committee has already recommended that eligibility relief should be provided to student-athletes in every class who participate in spring sports. WSU offers eight spring sports: baseball, men’s and women’s golf, softball, men’s and women’s tennis and men’s and women’s track and field.

But WSU coaches are curious about the details of such an arrangement.

[1972Shocker]

NCAA Agrees to Grant Extra Year of Eligibility to Spring Student Athletes

Softball:
The 3 seniors are Madison Perrigan, Bailey Lange and Ryleigh Buck. All key contributors on the Shocker team. Madison Perrigan was chasing the career home run record of 39 and the career RBI record of 153 this season. When the season was called about halfway through (27 games in) Madison had 7 home runs and 20 RBI raising her career totals to 37 home runs and 134 RBI. It will be intereting to see if these ladies decide to come back next year if those numbers will count of if Madison will have to reset at 30 home runs and 114 RBI to begin next year.

This past November Head Coach Kristi Bredbenner announced the signing of am 8 player recruiting class to join the 6 freshman on this year's class. So if everyone returns and all the recruits show up that would give the Shockers a 14 player freshman class next year. The dugout was already getting a bit crowded with 3 seniors scheduled to depart and 8 incoming recruits.

Looks like Madison's numbers from 2020 will count in her career totals. I guess we'll see if she comes back. If she does she may end up with somewhat inflated career numbers that will be extremely difficult to best at least on a total numbers basis.

https://twitter.com/tayloreldridge/s...52500916924418

The problem Wedge foresees is the logjam on rosters now that there will essentially be a double freshmen class next season with the 2020 freshmen remaining freshmen and the 2021 recruits joining them. WSU’s roster currently has nine freshmen.

The NCAA Division I Council acknowledged Tuesday that further discussions about the roster management situation will be required.

One program that’s facing that kind of traffic jam is the WSU softball team. All three of the team’s seniors — catcher Madison Perrigan, ace Bailey Lange and infielder Ryleigh Buck — are crucial pieces to the team, and all three are on board with returning next spring. But WSU also signed eight freshmen in the fall under the assumption that those three players would be graduating.

As it stands, the softball team will now have a 14-player freshman class next season.

“We’re just going to have a lot more options now and we’re going to have to sit down at the end of the day and look at what’s best going forward for the program and what’s best going forward for each individual student-athlete,” Bredbenner said. “I’m not one who wants to waste a year of eligibility on someone who is going to have to play behind a senior that comes back now. So there will have to be some conversations about redshirting, some conversations about maybe playing a different position. We’ll try to do what’s best for each individual player.”

Bredbenner said she expects to have 19 players returning and with the eight incoming recruits, WSU’s roster would swell to 27 players — seven over the limit of 20 players that teams are allowed to travel with.


Read more here: https://www.kansas.com/sports/colleg...#storylink=cpy

[1972Shocker]

Rebekah Topham relieved to retain senior year of eligibility at Wichita State

https://westerniowatoday.com/2020/03...sc_ref=twitter

10-minute interview at the end of the article.