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Davis

Davis, California

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Editorial: ICA cuts

On Friday, the UC Davis athletics department announced the discontinuation of four teams – men’s swimming and diving, men’s indoor track and field, men’s wrestling and women’s rowing.

Even though the university has been fielding cuts across all departments, a cut to athletics is particularly visible because these four teams will no longer be seen.

Considering that up to nine teams could have been discontinued, the athletic department made the best of a bad situation by eliminating only four.

With that decision, the athletics department will remain a broad-based sports program as it still offers 23 sports – five more than the NCAA Division I average and three more than the closest Big West Conference schools, UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly.

Of course, this cut causes pain and hardship to the over 150 athletes who are affected. They may not be able to play the sport they love anymore at UC Davis or may have to transfer to continue competing.

Even so, the university doesn’t leave these athletes completely out in the cold. Every affected athlete who is on scholarship will still receive grant-in-aid to attend school here for another year. These athletes also have the option to attempt to make their sport a club, allowing them to continue to compete at the college level.

When the campus-wide budget reductions of $36 million were announced in February, it included a $1.79 million cut to the intercollegiate athletic program. The cut of these four teams equates to about $500,000 over that amount, saving $5 million over the next five years.

While this cut may be tough to swallow, especially for the athletes and coaches from the teams that are affected, this was the best possible scenario of a necessary fate.

9 COMMENTS

  1. GG Many of these athletes are paying there own way but enjoy the fact that they can do sports as well as go to school. The obscenely expensive sports that the school can’t afford are still running. Men’s swimming coaches volunteered to coach for free for two year and the few men that are on scholarship agreed to give them up. You know nothing about the attitude this campus that is obvious to anyone that listened to your whining.

  2. GG the athletes love their sports that is why they are upset, not because they miss the scholarships. They are passionate about competing and once you go club, the level of competition decreases dramatically. shame on you for not understanding that passion

  3. Grow up. Stop whining about that fact that you can’t play sports, get a college education paid for because you play sports, and get a phenomenal public education, all for no price to you. This is the real world where you have to pay for things like that in the free market, and the university cannot afford in THE LONG RUN to keep an obscenely large amount of sports programs up and running. The attitude of some people on this campus sickens me all the way across the Atlantic. Shame on you.

    -GG

  4. I am very disheartened to see this editorial, which fails to address any of the issues the student-athletes have raised about Mr. Warzecka’s controversial decision to cut sports. Even a cursory investigation would have revealed that the criteria used by Mr. Warzecka is misleading and false. If this decsion is justifiable why did he need to alter data to support it? Mr. Woods letter is long on explanations but short on any details that might support those explanations. And, why did two members of the advisory committee resign from the committee? Perhaps the editorial board can take this opportunity to go back and ask some of these questions before blindly accepting the status quo.

  5. If you did your research you would know that they are only keeping the scholarships fro those who signed a 4 year contract and many athletes did not. The number of “9” sports was a number they put out so that they could look better when they only had to cut 4 teams. Also, they could have saved more athletes and more money had they cut women’s indoor track (these athletes are also on the outdoor team so they saved those opportunities) and 2 other small women’s teams like lacrosse and field hockey. They did this for the men to save opportunities, so what does this say about what Greg thinks about women’s opportunities?

  6. It is obvious from your editorial that you did no research before nor do you care about the athletes in question. Who cares about keeping scholarships when you got one in the first place for the sport that was just cut. Do you think everything is now okay because of this. Did you realize that the athletes volunteered to give up their scholarships to keep all of the sports. Why do we have to be like other UC’s? Where is equity and your statement that it is the best possible senario nauseates me. Obviously the admin believes some sports are more important than others and that it doesn’t matter if the budget is spread evenly among all the sports. Before you spout off about something you know nothing about do some research and become informed.

  7. This is a disappointing editorial. Did you do any research beyond the UCD press release? If you had, you would have learned that the UCD administration did not do the campus any favors by “only eliminating four” teams. In fact, they didn’t have to cut any teams at all if they had looked at any of the budget proposals laid out by coaches which saved all four teams cut for at least two years. This isn’t a budget problem, it’s a move to free up funds so Davis can ultimately join the WAC. Why do you think the whole cutting process happened so suddenly and secretly? Why weren’t the cuts spread across all the teams? Why isn’t the Aggie doing the investigative journalism that this issue deserves?

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