Thursday’s meeting of the NCAA D1 Council included multiple agenda items that had effect on the sport of softball.
Most notably, the Council introduced legislation that would remove the “volunteer coach” designation and allow that current position to be made a full-time countable coaching role.
Similar legislation was previously explored and voted upon a few years ago, but was focused solely on baseball and softball at the time and was not ratified. The new legislation includes volunteer coaches in all sports.
Under current roles, volunteer assistant coaches are not technically employed by the school; do not receive employment benefits; and are not eligible to recruit except in certain circumstances when a waiver is acquired (i.e. in place of a full-time coach during a specific period of time). This legislation would remove those restrictions and allow coaching staffs to have four full-time members.
The legislation, which is widely expected to pass this time around, would go into effect for the 2023-24 school year. The legislation will go to an official vote in January, must be ratified by the D1 Council, and would then likely be rubber-stamped by the NCAA’s Board of Governors before being enacted ahead of the ’23-’24 year.
Worthy of note, the proposal would not *force* schools to hire additional full-time staff members; it would simply open the door for such hirings to be permissible. Detractors of the legislation when the proposal was up for a vote originally included a number of coaches from smaller schools who would not be able to fund an additional coaching position, or who are currently not at full capacity on their staffs and could potentially be even further “behind” if and when this new legislation goes into effect.
A second proposal is also on the table that would increase baseball and softball countable coaching limits to five; this proposal is separate from the volunteer-to-full-time proposal and a potential voting result is more of an unknown. Ice hockey is a third sport included in this separate proposal. The second, separate proposal comes from the NCAA Transformation Committee.
