The new two-year budget cycle that begins in fall 2008 brings additional steps for Division III championships to keep pace with the expense of housing and feeding student-athletes, obtaining quality officiating and ensuring appropriate coaching and staff support for competitors.

The Division III Championships Committee, which took the first official steps last September toward establishing a championships budget for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons, is expected to consider the following possibilities when it meets February 11-13 to formally compile recommendations:

• Another increase in student-athlete per diem, from $75 to $80.

• Increases in officials’ fees and per diem. The committee is considering increasing fees by 4 percent annually during each of the two years and also increasing officials’ per diem from $40 to $45.

• Including additional coaches or staff members in traveling parties in the individual/team sports of cross country, golf, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, and wrestling. The committee is considering a formula to include as many as four nonstudent-athletes in an institution’s travel party, based on the number of student-athletes traveling to a championship event.

• Increasing squad sizes in the sports of baseball (from 24 to 25 student-athletes), football (from 52 to 56) and cross country (from seven to eight).

After major steps by Division III earlier in the decade to expand championship field sizes and implement automatic qualification, the Championships Committee has turned its attention in recent years to upgrading funding for competition expenses. For example, it has increased student-athlete per diem in $5 increments in three of the past four years. It also is focusing on factors that impact those student-athletes’ competitive experience, such as paying for quality officiating and ensuring that teams can bring enough competitors to the championship site.

The actions currently under consideration – which ultimately are subject to approval by the Division III Management and Presidents Councils – represent a continuing desire to more fully fund the expenses of competitors and officials who are selected to participate in Division III championships and improve the overall quality of the student-athlete’s championships experience.