Cutting sports is up to LHU president
Finalized proposal would drop men’s track and field teams
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By WENDY STIVER
wstiver@lockhaven.com
LOCK HAVEN -- A finalized proposal is on the desk of Lock Haven University President Dr. Michael Fiorentino Jr. to completely cut two sports: men's indoor track and field and men's outdoor track and field.
This proposal was delivered Monday morning to the president and to the coaches union at LHU, reported Rodney Jenkins, vice president for university relations.
A third sport, women's swimming, was originally proposed to be cut as well. Data indicates a trend toward higher women's enrollment at the university in the coming years, Jenkins said. As a result, that sport is proposed to continue, in what is called the "Lock Haven University Athletics Department Proposed Realignment Plan."
The proposal is designed to address Title IX requirements as well as finances, Jenkins said.
Universities and colleges must adhere to the Title IX federal guidelines regarding equal opportunities for student athletes in competition, funding, and team sizes.
LHU currently meets the requirements but must regularly examine them and prepare to continue meeting them, Jenkins said.
To meet the guidelines, schools look at a variety of factors, he said. It is not as simple as matching student numbers with teams.
Schools look at whether their athletics opportunities are in proportion to enrollment, he said, and LHU is now seeing a change in its student ratios. Currently, women students make up 56 percent of total enrollment, reported athletics director Dr. Thomas M. Gioglio. This is an increase from the previous academic year. Under Title IX, LHU must deal with this number next academic year.
And, projections show that by 2021 -- just four years away - that number will grow to 60 percent, Jenkins added.
The coaches union responded to the proposal to cut three sports. The union suggested keeping sports and adding more to address both the Title IX requirements and financial constraints. Athletics relies on student fees for 85 percent of its budget, so more student athletes equals more student fee dollars.
The union has proposed adding women's bowling, women's water polo, women's tennis, and women's golf.
But to expand sports, there must be an interest from students in that sport, Jenkins said. Lock Haven University does a survey of incoming women students every year. (Title IX requires this survey of the "under-represented" gender, he said.) Incoming female students reported 0 percent interest in three of the suggested sports: bowling, water polo and golf. Their interest in tennis is at 2.5 percent, according to the survey.
Logic would indicate that adding a sport would attract new students who are not represented in this survey, students who would like to play the sport at the collegiate level and would consider that when choosing their college or university.
Jenkins said this may be true. Yet, there is no way to measure interest or gather data from students who may, or may not, attend the university because a new sport is offered.
In addition, he said, the money is not there to start new sports. It generally takes one to three years for funds raised by a new sport to exceed the expenses, he said. If all the team members turned out to be new, additional students, that would make the financial end better, he said, but there can be no guarantee of this.
"I can't add costs with no detailed projections that those costs will turn into revenue," he said.
Because athletics funding is tied to student fees, LHU's dropping enrollment (2010 was the peak year) has meant less money available for sports. Jenkins summarized the situation as: "More students, more money. Less students, less money."
The decrease in student numbers is at least partly due to a decrease in the number of high school graduates in the entire Northeast. Projections show that trend will continue well into 2021, Jenkins said.
LHU expects to have more students for the coming 2017-18 academic year, but not enough to make up for the decrease since the 2015-16 year, he said.
The coaches work very hard at recruiting and retaining athletes, Jenkins said. He does not expect that "roster management" will make enough of a change to save sports from being cut.
Gioglio said the rosters for women's sports are full. Some sports can attract students who have no guarantee of playing very much, if at all, and those students appear on the roster for the team. In general, though, the women's sports offered at LHU don't seem to be among them, according to both Gioglio and Jenkins.
Men's football can have 85 team members, Gioglio said, but one doesn't see that with women's lacrosse. "It doesn't fit the sport," he said.
Why these sports? "It's all based on trends," Gioglio said.
Although the student athletes on the men's indoor and outdoor track and field teams are mostly the same people, they are counted under Title IX as two separate rosters of students. Cutting these two sports affects one population of students but drops two rosters, Jenkins has indicated. Other colleges and universities apparently have seen this same thing and have made the same cuts, he said.
The new academic year starts July 1, so there has not been much time for coaches or students to react to the original announcement that three sports might be cut.
This has not stopped talk on campus, in The Express letters to the editor, during the most recent university trustees meeting, or on Twitter with #SavetheHaven.
Still, students must make plans if they wish to continue to play their sport throughout their collegiate years.
Jenkins said this is all triggered by the budget situation. About three years ago, he began meeting with coaches to show them what was happening with the budget, he said.
This academic year, athletics has taken more than one set of funding cuts. There is nothing left to cut except people and programs, he said. The university has looked at every single cut, every single sport for cost-saving measures, he said.
After seeing little change in enrollment from last fall to this spring semester, he said, he met with the coaches in December and said there is no choice from a budget standpoint; there is nothing else to do except cut programs.
The university administration wrote a proposal and gave it to the coaches union, which by contract had 30 days to respond. The union took those 30 days and came back with a counter-proposal titled "Points for Consideration from Coaches, Faculty, Student Athletes." The coaches suggested additions, not cuts.
During that 30-day period, Jenkins said, multiple meet-and-discuss meetings were held with coaches as "a chance to go deeper in the numbers."
Also, the president, vice president, athletics director and associate athletics director have met with the teams named in the draft proposal as well as with the Student Advisory Council, Gioglio said.
The proposal now in front of the president includes other points, one of them being one or more "modifications" of the operations of the women's swim program, to be defined by Gioglio and approved by the president.
Women's field hockey could be moved from NCAA Division I to Division II, but the current proposal is to review this for another year. The wrestling program at LHU is in Division I and also brings in funding on its own. Women's field hockey does not bring in the same level of funding at this time, Jenkins said.
The last time a sport was dropped at LHU was in 1993, according to Douglas C. Spatafore Jr., director of sports information and marketing. Three sports were cut at that time: men's and women's tennis, and men's golf.
The following year, LHU added women's soccer, he said, and no sports have been added since then.
In 2009 baseball was cut, he said, but it was reinstated within about a week due to protests.