Just when every athlete at Dickinson thinks their season is going well, they realize their next match up is against Johns Hopkins University. I’ve felt it personally in both cross country and track, and I’ve heard the defeat in people’s voices when they tell me they’re playing Hopkins. I wasn’t aware of Hopkins’ athletic prowess until I got here, but watching how all of their seasons have panned out, regardless of the sport, the question came to me: why aren’t they Division I? Their men’s and women’s lacrosse teams are both members of the Big 10 Conference, participating at the Division I level, and they are even ranked higher than schools several times their size in the Big 10, such as the University of Maryland and Rutgers. 

The National Collegiate Athletics Association has divided the 1,000+ schools it encompasses into three divisions: Divisions I, II, III. Division I is considered the highest objective  level of athletic performance. Across the board, the highest performing athletes compete for Division I schools, in large part because of the scholarship aspect. Dickinson is Division III, meaning athletic scholarships are not permitted, whereas with many DI schools, athletes receive full-ride scholarships for their four years Some receive  NIL (name, image and likeness) deals during their tenure as an athlete. In order to qualify as DI, institutions must “support at least seven sports for both men and women (or six for men and eight for women), including two team sports for each gender…[and] must have teams playing every season…[and] both men’s and women’s sports teams must participate in every season.” Division I schools are also tracked the closest in the media, with college football Saturdays being  popular August through September, and March Madness drawing people in to create their own brackets for D1 basketball. Division I sports cost a lot and demand even more from their athletes, but in turn, they are largely profitable for the institution. Hopkins currently ranks 10th in the highest endowments in the country, clocking in at $13.73 billion dollars for the 2025 fiscal year , ranking it higher than many D1 schools.  

Johns Hopkins currently has 22 varsity athletics teams at the DIII level and 2 teams at the D1 level. They have 57 national championship titles—two of those being won concurrently on November 23, 2019. Additionally, Johns Hopkins has amassed 314 conference titles, 179 of those being in the Centennial Conference. This is not very encouraging for anyone who faces Hopkins, as high-performing seasons are crushed to dust in the aftermath of getting whalloped by the Blue Jays. This serves as a slap in the face to sportsmanship as Hopkins has crafted such athletic gallantry to such a degree of punching above their weight class. 

In the current outdoor track schedule,  there is a lack of competitions against other Division III schools. Between the Raleigh Relays, Dalton Ebanks Invitational, Navy Day and the 2026 Duke Invite, Hopkins has made a routine of going head to head with some of the largest and most competitive programs in the country. They are holding their own against these schools as well: keeping with the theme of track, it is worth noting that Caleb Tenney is ranked 8th nationally in the 3 kilometer race amongst freshman in track. Anthony Clark is ranked 5th nationally for freshman 5k times, with all those above them being from Division I schools. 

I acknowledge the benefits of being a Division III institution, but it is disheartening to toe the line with programs so clearly more dominant than you and who carry themselves in the same way as a DI school. Hopkins has a habit of using pacers during track conference championships, meaning they will ask an athlete to qualify for an event, thus taking a spot from someone else, for the sole purpose of helping their teammate hit a certain time. While not banned on paper, it introduces a new vector of competitiveness and questionable sportsmanship to the conference. Hopkins has shown that it can perform well against larger, arguably more competitive institutions and yet continues to come back to the Centennial Conference to assert dominance. The excuse of it being an academically rigorous and research-focused university loses weight when you acknowledge that every Ivy League school is Division I, holding their athletes to incredibly high standards. While I’m not in the NCAA board room calling the shots on who goes in what division, I think I speak for every frustrated athlete on this campus when I say the following: Johns Hopkins should transition to Division I athletics for all of their varsity teams.