Tough questions will be asked during review of U of R athletics

Competitiveness, funding on table as university assesses poor performance

Changes may be on the horizon for the University of Regina’s sporting landscape.

Harold Riemer, the dean of the faculty of kinesiology and health studies, currently is recruiting people to review U of R athletics.

The review initially was to be done in June, but it has been postponed to September. All of the school’s academic units typically do a review every 10 years or so; the most-recent one in kinesiology/ athletics was conducted in 2004.

“There are lots of good reasons to do it,” Riemer said. “I don’t think anyone would agree that our performance over the last five or six years — with the exception of a couple of teams — has been what we would like. (The review) is not just performance-based, but attendance-wise as well.

“Budget-wise, we need to look at it because our costs keep going up and our sources of revenue aren’t expanding exponentially.”

The majority of the U of R’s sports teams struggled in the 201516 season.

The football team (0-8 record), women’s soccer side (1-10-3), women’s volleyball squad (1-23), men’s volleyball team (2-22) and men’s hockey team (7-21) all missed the playoffs.

The men’s basketball, women’s basketball and women’s hockey teams finished with winning records and qualified for their postseasons. The Cougars advanced to the CIS women’s basketball championship tournament, but didn’t medal.

While Regina swimmers, wrestlers and track and field athletes fared well at the Canada West and CIS championships, the Cougars didn’t win any team titles. That arose in part because the Cougars didn’t qualify enough athletes for nationals.

“Most schools are asking the kinds of questions we’re asking: How do you continue to provide a good level of athletic experience for the athletes? How do you remain competitive? And how do you deal with the funding?” Riemer said.

“Historically, we have treated everyone equally (in funding). If you look across some of the morerecent reviews — UBC, for example — they’ve had to look at not every sport getting treated exactly the same way.”

If the Regina review suggests that various sports should receive different levels of funding, that would prompt some thinking. So would the idea that some sports should be cut to save money.

“(A question like that) is all part of the process,” Riemer said. “I don’t want to go into this with any kind of pre-conceived ideas. But I do know that if I look five years out, it’s going to become more challenging to fund every sport at the level that we’re trying to do now. So how do you deal with that?”

Many of the reviewers won’t have a connection to the university, so they can provide a perspective that those on campus may not have. That would take emotion out of the equation.

Riemer noted the school would be “open to all kinds of ideas” arising from the review, which will look at the past decade.

Questions about the teams’ athletic performances, the amount of money spent on athletes in each program, and how that spending compares to other schools will be asked.

The hope is that every question will be answered.

“Our goal would be to find a place where we, as an institution, can be successful athletically,” Riemer said.

“That doesn’t mean winning a CIS championship every year, but if you’re going to run athletics, you may as well run it to have some modicum of success.

“If you’re not successful, it’s hard to attract good athletes so there’s a spiral there. I’m not sure which comes first, the chicken or the egg, but we need poultry.”

Historically, we have treated everyone equally (in funding).