Pandemic forces St. Mary’s to enact financial cutbacks
Income loss means furloughs, salary reduction and schedules likely trimming to regional foes
Bracing for what he anticipates will be a 10 percent reduction to the department’s budget, St. Mary’s athletic director Robert Coleman described the past few weeks as “high anxiety.”
Each day, Coleman bounces between an array of digital meetings with various coaches, officials and leadership groups, trying to put minds at ease and determine when and how to safely return to athletic activity.
Coleman is also grappling with NCAA Division II’s new scheduling regulations and the impending furloughs and salary cuts at St. Mary’s in response to the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Across the board, budgets will be tightened,” Coleman said. “It’s to be expected. We need to get through this year. “We know there’s going to be an effect even past this year, but hopefully not to this degree.”
St. Mary’s announced Friday that 24 university staff members will be laid off and 57 employees will be furloughed, with many others taking salary reductions of 10 percent or less. With enrollment projected to decline, the private university is bracing for a $10 million reduction to its fiscal 2021 budget.
Coleman said some of the athletic program’s assistant coaches will be furloughed for a month, while other staffers will see their salaries reduced.
He added a hiring freeze has not impacted any athletic staff positions, but the department will not be filling graduate assistant roles that have often been “used as coaches in a lot of our sports.”
“We’re pretty thin as a staff,” Coleman said. “I don’t see how we can make any further reductions. ... To do more than that would be a really, really big hurt for us. We’re just not that deep in staff to
make more significant cuts.”
To ease the financial burden on schools, the NCAA Division II Presidents Council earlier this month voted to decrease the minimum and maximum number of contests in all sports. The reduction varied by sport, ranging from about 10 to 33 percent.
The Lone Star Conference has 19 members, including programs in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Coleman speculated the league may split into more regional competition or host championship events at campus sites.
Though most of those conversations are in the preliminary stages, Coleman said the NCAA’s decision “is going to be very, very helpful for us.”
“Most of these maximums allow the conference play to get done, but obviously the nonconference opponents are going to be significantly reduced moving forward,” Coleman said. “It just makes it more regional play. There’s not going to be a lot of flying or those types of things.”
The Division II Administrative Committee earlier this month voted to permit voluntary workouts for student-athletes in team sports until the start of the fall 2020 term. The Division I Council voted last week to allow voluntary athletic activities beginning June 1.
Coleman said St. Mary’s, which is targeting a fall return to campus, will not be as quick to follow suit.
“We won’t be doing that,” Coleman said. “If we were to do something like that, the soonest we would be able to do it is July, at the earliest. But that’s only if we feel comfortable and things are all in place. If not, then it will be August. Once again, I don’t think there’s necessarily a rush to this. We want to do it the right way. And if that’s August, then that’s August.”
The department’s athletic budget is made up mainly of institutional funds, corporate sponsorships and donor contributions, Coleman said.
With all three areas expected to take a hit during the economic downturn, Coleman said the school is planning for a “vanilla year,” cutting back on items like booster events or travel for professional development.
Scholarships and recruiting may be impacted in the future, but Coleman said he prioritizes preserving those areas.
“It’s important that we are recruiting, that we are bringing students to campus,” Coleman said. “That retention is so important to our school right now, because we are enrollment based, and so I think that money is being put to good use at this point, quite honestly.”
The strain on the St. Mary’s program has seemed tame compared to fellow Lone Star Conference member St. Edward’s University in Austin, which dropped six of its 16 athletic teams in response to the pandemic.
Coleman said he doesn’t envision a similar scenario for St. Mary’s. The department sponsors 11 sports — just one clear of the Division II minimum.
“For us to cut a sport, I don’t see the money savings, so to speak, out of that,” Coleman said. “Especially if you have to cut a larger sport where you’re going to lose a lot of students. It doesn’t hold weight, so to speak, so I don’t personally foresee that. And there’s been no conversation about it to date.”
“For us to cut a sport, I don’t see the money savings, so to speak, out of that. … And there’s been no conversation about it to date.”
St. Mary’s athletic director Robert Coleman