These athletes are relatively common at Division-I schools because colleges and universities across the country encourage many of their student-athletes to redshirt one year to be able to stay for a fifth year. A redshirt athlete can practice with the team for an entire season in which he or she is not technically a participant in the sport, thus gaining strength and experience that will benefit the player and the team in the future. An athlete generally redshirts as a freshman, a year when he or she is less likely to get significant playing time, or becomes a medical redshirt due to injury. Medical redshirts can participate in no more than 30 percent of his or her team's games in a season.
In the NCAA, the use of this practice varies from sport to sport, especially on the men's side. Many male college athletes stay if they feel it increases their professional prospects. Other NCAA rules, such as the minimum years a student-athlete must stay in college, help influence this phenomenon. For example, the University of Southern California football team had 13 redshirt seniors on its roster during the 2011-2012 season. The University of Notre Dame football team had six.
The NCAA mandates that every college football player who wants to go to the National Football League remain in college for three years before joining the professional league. NCAA basketball regulates that college basketball players only stay one year before moving on to the NBA. The University of Kentucky Wildcats, who won the NCAA Tournament this year, had no redshirt seniors and only one player who had redshirted on its roster. Georgetown University also had no fifth-year seniors on its roster and one redshirt player who sat out the majority of the 2012 season due to injury.
The USC football team had more fifth-year seniors last year than all of Dartmouth's teams for the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 school years combined. Much of the wide discrepancy can be attributed to the varying academic standards in athletic conferences across the country. At Ivy League institutes like Dartmouth, a student-athlete generally needs to have a solid academic reason and a redshirted season to be able to play for a fifth year.
The Big Green football team had two members of the Class of 2011, Luke Hussey '11 and Matt Oh '11, suit up this past season and has two members of the Class of 2012, Pat Lahey '12 and Michael Reilly '12, who will return next season for the Big Green. The women's hockey team has two players, Jenna Hobeika '12 and Reagan Fischer '12, who are coming back for a fifth year. The baseball team will welcome Cole Sulser '12 back next year for a fifth year after he sat out this season due to Tommy John surgery. The field hockey team was aided on the defensive end this year by Kerry Bracco '11, who came back to play in the fall.
Many redshirt seniors have a reputation for taking an easy class load during their final season. The most famous, or perhaps infamous, contributor to this stereotype was former USC quarterback Matt Leinart, who returned for a fifth season in 2005 needing two credits to fulfill his sociology major. He took ballroom dancing.
Since the Ivy League sets high academic standards for its student-athletes and generally discourages them from playing as fifth-year seniors, Big Green athletes need concrete academic reasons to change their Dartmouth Plans to accommodate a fifth year. Many fifth-year senior Dartmouth athletes, including Hobeika and Hussey, remain on campus to complete their B.E. degrees from the Thayer School of Engineering.
"At Ivy League schools, you need a reason to stay," Hobeika said. "It fit perfectly with my [engineering] major."
Hobeika tore her ACL just nine games into her freshman hockey season in Hanover. Her team won the ECAC Championship that year, defeating Harvard University in the final. As a result, the team made the NCAA Tournament, in which it fell in the first game to Wisconsin University. The playoff run meant that Hobeika played in 28 percent of the team's games that season, allowing her to redshirt the season.
"I knew I really wanted to redshirt, but I didn't really know that I could until the spring of my freshman year," she said. "It all worked out very nicely."
Hussey, a linebacker on the football team, missed his sophomore season to undergo double hip surgery but came back for a fifth year this year.
"It was great because it didn't have to interrupt my academic schedule at all, which was very convenient," he said.
Hussey said that there was a point at which he was unsure about playing for the Big Green in the 2011 season, but that changed at the midway point of the 2010 season.
"I was starting to play more and the team was getting better," he said. "Everything just all came together, and I felt like I could do some special things if I stayed."
During his tenure at Dartmouth, the team went 3-7 his freshman year, 0-10 his sophomore year, 6-4 in the 2010 season and tied for second in the Ivy League this past season.
In order to fill the academic requirement, athletes said that some pick up a minor to complete during their fifth year or simply graduate in the fall instead of the spring. Lahey and Bracco plan to follow this route.
Lahey, a sociology major, is within one term of graduating and is one class from completing his major.
"My plan is to finish these three classes in the fall and then graduate in the fall," he said.
Lahey redshirted his senior season due to surgery to repair a torn acetabular labrum on both sides of his hip.
"I knew I wanted to do a fifth year and finish it right," he said. "It was really a no-brainer. I didn't want to spend my last year on the sidelines."
There are many advantages, both personal and team-related, to playing as a fifth-year senior. Players said that taking a year off allows an extra year to mature and perfect technique.
"You grow so much in your senior year it's good to go back and give it another try," Hobeika said. "Looking back, we as a class made some mistakes. Now we can try to not do them again."
Hussey added that being a fifth-year senior generally means you are also a big contributor on the field, court or ice, which means that the team does not need to find an immediate replacement for you.
"Coaches always love having fifth-years," he said. "We're the old geezers on the team. We're expected to be a leader and mentor the guys. We should definitely add to the overall quality of the team."
In general, redshirt seniors said they love getting to come back and play one more year because they feel that it will be their best season of competition.
"Personally, I think it's a great advantage," he said. "I love Dartmouth, and getting to spend another term here while my friends are off working is truly a blessing."
