New U Sports scholarship policy presents exciting future opportunities for student-athletes

Malachi Emerson remembers the stress he faced in the final weeks of high school and throughout his first two years at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. 

A varsity soccer player with the UBCO Heat, Emerson is one of the thousands of Canadian university student-athletes who would have benefited from incoming changes to U Sports scholarship policies. 

Under the revised policies, student-athletes will no longer have to hit lofty, sometimes unattainable, academic standards heading into university, and will have more flexibility with grades throughout their post-secondary careers.

"It's really going to relieve the stress in the last few weeks of high school and first year of university," he told CBC Sports. "I was scrambling to get my grades higher, and I didn't end up doing it, but now people won't have to face that as much." 

The policies include requiring athletic departments to commit a minimum of 45 per cent of athletic scholarships to women's sports and 45 per cent to men's, with the remaining 10 per cent available to pivot to either side.

An athletic scholarship "unit" represents 100 per cent of a student's tuition and mandatory fees for any student-athlete during an academic year. In Ontario University Athletics (OUA), that is capped at a maximum of $5,000 per athlete, while on a national scale, teams are only allotted a specific amount of units, which are then split up among a roster. 

The OUA, however, will revisit their structure in upcoming board meetings. The conference has also had a similar gender equity requirement for the last 15 years. 

As a result of the recent U SPORTS announcement surrounding policy changes, the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OUA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OUA</a>