The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Some painful cuts, but necessary ones
UConn will drop four sports
The University of Connecticut will be eliminating its men’s tennis, swimming and diving, cross country and women’s rowing programs. The cuts, which were proposed at the school’s Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday morning and approved by the board in the early afternoon, are part of a mandate for the athletics department to cut 25 percent of its $42 million subsidy from the university over the next three years.
“While this is a painful decision, it is in the best interest of the long-term viability of UConn and UConn athletics,” said UConn President Thomas Katsouleas. “The Division of Athletics recently completed a thorough and comprehensive review of its operation and programs, an inquiry initiated long before the COVID-19 crisis began. For several years, the level of institutional financial support committed to athletics has been growing. Today, we shared some difficult decisions that nonetheless should chart a course towards better financial sustainability at a
level of support and sport sponsorship more in line with our peers.”
All four sports will still compete in 2020-21, and UConn will honor scholarships for those athletes who want to stay beyond 2020-21 and complete their degrees within four years.
“This was a very difficult, but necessary, decision,” director of athletics David Benedict said in a statement. “Reducing expenses is critical to our financial sustainability but that doesn’t make this decision any more palatable for the student-athletes and coaches on the affected teams. We are committed to providing impacted Huskies with our full support during this transition, whether they wish to stay at UConn or transfer to another institution. Despite our current emotions, we are optimistic that the financial plan approved today will serve as an important roadmap for a bright future for UConn athletics.”
Multiple coaches and former UConn athletes addressed the board by teleconference on Wednesday morning. Rowing coach Jennifer Sanford noted she had been informed by Benedict of the school’s plans on Tuesday afternoon.
“I did not believe rowing would be part of this proposal,” Sanford told the board. “Obviously, I was mistaken. Very few saw this coming. If approved, UConn would be the only Division I rowing program in the country that has been cut.”
Rowing offered 14.7 scholarships in 2019, with 25 athletes receiving some sort of financial aid. Sanford said the program had 45 rowers in the fall and 60 in the spring. She noted that rowing is often used as an offset to a school’s football program, which can offer 85 scholarships and over 100 roster spots to meet Title IX compliance.
Men’s tennis does not currently offer any scholarships, and men’s swimming and diving provided 5.87 in 2019, per the school’s annual report provided to the NCAA. Men’s track and field and cross country offered 13.35 scholarships, some of which went to athletes who competed in both cross country in the fall and distance running for track in the winter and spring.
According to the 2019 report, men’s tennis brought in $5,100 in revenues and $297,789 in expenses. Men’s swimming and diving accounted for $85,718 in revenues and $719,847 in expenses. Men’s track and cross country brought in $47,948 and cost $1,619,895 to run.
Women’s rowing brought in $264,210 in revenues and had $1,531,522 in expenses.
In 2019, there were 398 female athletes on women’s teams and 387 on men’s teams, which is about proportional to the school’s student body population and compliant with Title IX guidelines.
Addressing the board before the vote, Hamden’s Angelo Rossetti noted that “the best years of my life were when I attended UConn, specifically my 21⁄2years on the tennis team.”
Rossetti, a 1992 UConn graduate who is currently president of the USTA Connecticut chapter, added: “I couldn’t imagine UConn not having a varsity tennis program going forward. I don’t know what career I’d be in now. I probably wouldn’t be a published author or set two world records to raise money for charity and inspire others to have their own dreams and goals. Removing the program is unfathomable to me.”
Guilford’s Evan Powell just graduated from UConn and has already started a job as an actuary in New Jersey. He has no ill will towards the school and says “it was a huge honor to play for UConn tennis,” but felt for his former teammates.
“It’s super tough,” he said. “It’s pretty rough for them, but they’re all smart kids and good tennis players. So they’ll definitely have options to transfer or
whatever they want to do.”
The tennis program, along with golf, track and other sports, has raised a significant amount of money in pledges over the past month or so. However, private fundraising wasn’t sustainable to keep all of those programs, and will still need to be a major revenue source for some remaining programs.
North Hansen, a West Haven resident who swam at Notre Dame-West Haven and for the past two years at UConn, got the news on a Tuesday afternoon Zoom call with UConn swim coach Chris Maiello.
“It’s really frustrating,” Hansen said. “I feel like this year we really bonded as a team, and that’s what I’m gonna miss most. I really made connections with everybody in my class, both on the men’s and women’s swim team. It’s really heartbreaking, because we swim together every day. We have so many relationships and friendships with members of the women’s team, and now we’re getting split up, which is really unfortunate.”
He also noted that UConn men’s swimming had its first-ever NCAA qualifier this year in Will Kearsey. Hansen, who is not on scholarship, said he’ll talk to his coaches about whether he’ll come back to swim next year for the Huskies, though he noted that he wants to train for the 2021 Olympic Trials — and also pointed out that it’s a little late in the game to transfer to another school.
Chris Ferreira, who grew up in Madison and now lives in Milford, comes from a long lineage of UConn swimmers. His father, Thomas, and mother, Sandra, graduated in 1981 and 1983, respectively, while Ferreira graduated in 2008 and his younger brother Stephen was on the diving team before graduating in 2010.
“It’s obviously a horrible feeling,” Ferreira said. “Swimming, in my family, has been part of my entire life. It’s how my parents met, I coached for a while after I graduated ... it’s one of those sports where most of my connections and friends I’ve met was through swimming.”
He added that the elimination of men’s swimming and diving “will definitely affect any donations I make in the future (to UConn).”
In addition to cutting sports, UConn athletics will be tasked with reducing the financial deficit. These measures include a reduction in operating expenses by 15 percent, achieved in part by more regionalized nonconference team travel for a number of sports and fewer summer school classes for student-athletes. Additionally, the university will reduce the cost of scholarships for several internal units across campus, including athletics, beginning in the 2020-21 academic year.
Also, men’s track and field will lose five scholarships and golf will lose one. UConn golf offered 4.78 scholarships in 2019.
Benedict has also taken a voluntary 15 percent pay cut, and will not take any cash bonuses. Salaries for men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley, women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma and football coach Randy Edsall are protected by the AAUP and covered by its collective bargaining agreement.
“We realize that this decision, as difficult as it might be for us as trustees, it is far more difficult for the student-athletes, coaches and staffs who are impacted,” Board of Trustees chairman Dan Toscano said. “Remember, these are our students. This is our family.”
Most of the speakers (some of them very emotional) at Wednesday’s meeting were former track and field athletes, including Rev. Steven Cousin, pastor at Bethel AME Church in New Haven; Michael Whittlesey, a 1990 UConn grad and current University of Kansas distance coach; and Katherine Elizabeth Kennedy, granddaughter of former longtime UConn track coach Bob Kennedy.