Alberta Intercollegiate Women’s Fastball Association Scholarship Program
Teams in the Western Collegiate Softball Association play under the umbrella of the Alberta Intercollegiate Women’s Fastball Association (AIWFA). AIWFA is a registered non-profit organization dedicated to establishing women’s fastball as varsity sport. To this end, AIWFA has established a post-secondary women’s fastball league at the sport club level – a league open to all colleges and universities in Western Canada.
All student athletes on Alberta teams – University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, Mount Royal University, and SAIT Polytechnic in the WCSA are invited to apply for scholarships valued at up to $750.00. The Scholarship Committee Chair will direct a review of applications to determine acceptance. Your application may be emailed to wcsascholarship@gmail.com between June 8, 2023 and Aug 8, 2023. Official transcripts must be received as well by August 15, 2023.
Official Transcripts must be addressed to AIWFA 2023 SCHOLARSHIP and mailed by the educational institution to:
WCSA Scholarship Committee
c/o Randy Plishka
30 Silvertip Drive
High River, Alberta
T1V 1Z1
Scholarships will only be available once funding from AGLC is available.
Criteria
There are two levels of scholarship, based on your GPA.
- Academic Achievement – Priority is given to applicants with a Grade Point Average of 3.00 or higher (equivalency of various institutions’ GPA standards will be considered), based on official transcripts of the 2022 – 2023 fall and winter terms. These awards will be up to a value of $750. A second level scholarship is given to applicants with a Grade Point Average between 2.50 to 2.99 (equivalency of various institutions’ GPA standards will be considered), based on official transcripts of the 2022 – 2023 fall and winter terms. These awards will be up to a value of $250.
- Full-Time Student Status – The applicant must have completed at least 60% of a program’s full-time course load thoughout the 2022 – 2023 fall and winter terms.
- Team Membership – The applicant must have been a member in good standing with an WCSA team during the 2022 season and must have participated in 70% of the team’s games, practices and required team functions – as confirmed by the team’s head coach.
- Citizenship/ Sportsmanship – The applicant must have continually demonstrated the ideals of good citizenship on campus, on the playing field and in the greater community – as confirmed by their team’s head coach.
- Scholarship Survey Questions – The applicant is to submit answers to the following five questions. Ideally your answers will total at least 750 words.
- 1) How did you first become aware of the WCSA and the opportunities at the school you chose?
- 2) What would you do to help to increase or improve on the awareness of the league to prospective players and their parents?
- 3) The league schedules in the past have been set up to allow for each school to host a weekend, and all teams would travel to that location to play. With the geographical spread of the teams in the league, as well as the hope to add schools in the future, that formula will not work. What type of schedule format would you like to see in the future? Rotational hosting by each school? That might mean that your school might not get a home weekend some years. Two hosts for each weekend with 3 or 4 teams attending? Each school hosts, but not all schools will attend your home dates. Split the league into 2 conferences, say east and west, and play limited games against the other conference? Feel free to offer your own ideas.
- 4) Playoffs have always included all teams in the league. As the league grows and the number of teams increases, a variation of a round robin format will not work because of time constraints. In past playoffs, we used a variation of a double knockout format. We could continue this format or we could limit the number of teams that make the playoffs like the OCAA and OUS do in Ontario. That format would put emphasis on the regular season to finish in the top 4 for example. Alternatively if you chose to split into 2 conferences, you could have the top 2 from each conference meet in a 4 team playoff. The question then is, with many choices available, what type of playoff would you want, and why?
- 5) The WCSA counts on the money received from the AGLC casino to pay for many of the league expenses. These expenses include umpires, diamonds, awards, reimbursement for some in province travel, and of course these scholarships that you are applying for. The next casino (date to be determined) we will need volunteers from each team to make our commitment to AGLC. How much of an impact will these dates have on the potential of you and your team to come up with roughly a third of the volunteers required?