Rowing Programs Get the Axe
PRESS RELEASE
CINCINNATI, Ohio -- The University of Cincinnati Department of Athletics is realigning its sports offerings to more effectively address the evolving shifts in the popularity of women's sports.
With a growth rate at the high school level of 290 percent over the last decade, the number of female athletes participating in girl's lacrosse has skyrocketed to almost 52,000 according to a recent survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations. What this translates to is a much greater need for opportunities at the college level which UC Athletics will address by adding women's lacrosse as a varsity sport.
Concurrently, the University of Cincinnati has elected to discontinue its women's rowing program at the conclusion of its traditional season in the spring of 2007.
These moves are part of a long-range planning process initiated to optimize the department's objectives of producing championship caliber programs and ensuring that the department is being managed as efficiently as possible and in accordance with the standards and best practices as set forth by the NCAA. The CATAPULT plan focuses on three main initiatives: winning BIG EAST team championships, high-level academic achievement, and a comprehensive integration with the Greater Cincinnati Community.
This is the third (or fifth, depending on how you count it) collegiate rowing program that I have heard was being cut by their athletic department in the past year. Personally, I find this amazing. Junior rowing is a niche sport, certainly, yet there is no end to the number of recruitable boys and girls pulling on oars in high schools across the country. Add the University of Cincinnati to a list that includes the University of New Hampshire and Rutgers University, two schools who have elected to drop rowing, along with other sports, in order to fund a higher-profile sport (in UNH and Rutgers' case, football, from what I understand). Rutgers, prior to the end of this year, has sponsored men's heavyweight, lightweight, and women's openweight rowing, and the loss of these programs is a blow to the depth of rowing on the East Coast.
Certainly, crew is an expensive sport. When the essential tools to field a team run upwards of $30,000, you know you're going to have to allocate a good chunk of the athletic budget to pay for scholarships, coaches, facilities, etc. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing; with Division I-A football coaches earning an average of $950,000, adding a women's rowing program to your department is a way to achieve gender balance as required by law in Title IX. But for the University of Cincinnati and the University of New Hampshire, rowing was already a women's sport - men's teams were club sports. One has to wonder about the wisdom of these cuts, especially at UC, where the women's rowing team had leveled charges against the Athletic Department that the quality of departmental assistance they were receiving did not necessarily help make the school Title IX-compliant.
CINCINNATI, Ohio -- The University of Cincinnati Department of Athletics is realigning its sports offerings to more effectively address the evolving shifts in the popularity of women's sports.
With a growth rate at the high school level of 290 percent over the last decade, the number of female athletes participating in girl's lacrosse has skyrocketed to almost 52,000 according to a recent survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations. What this translates to is a much greater need for opportunities at the college level which UC Athletics will address by adding women's lacrosse as a varsity sport.
Concurrently, the University of Cincinnati has elected to discontinue its women's rowing program at the conclusion of its traditional season in the spring of 2007.
These moves are part of a long-range planning process initiated to optimize the department's objectives of producing championship caliber programs and ensuring that the department is being managed as efficiently as possible and in accordance with the standards and best practices as set forth by the NCAA. The CATAPULT plan focuses on three main initiatives: winning BIG EAST team championships, high-level academic achievement, and a comprehensive integration with the Greater Cincinnati Community.
This is the third (or fifth, depending on how you count it) collegiate rowing program that I have heard was being cut by their athletic department in the past year. Personally, I find this amazing. Junior rowing is a niche sport, certainly, yet there is no end to the number of recruitable boys and girls pulling on oars in high schools across the country. Add the University of Cincinnati to a list that includes the University of New Hampshire and Rutgers University, two schools who have elected to drop rowing, along with other sports, in order to fund a higher-profile sport (in UNH and Rutgers' case, football, from what I understand). Rutgers, prior to the end of this year, has sponsored men's heavyweight, lightweight, and women's openweight rowing, and the loss of these programs is a blow to the depth of rowing on the East Coast.
Certainly, crew is an expensive sport. When the essential tools to field a team run upwards of $30,000, you know you're going to have to allocate a good chunk of the athletic budget to pay for scholarships, coaches, facilities, etc. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing; with Division I-A football coaches earning an average of $950,000, adding a women's rowing program to your department is a way to achieve gender balance as required by law in Title IX. But for the University of Cincinnati and the University of New Hampshire, rowing was already a women's sport - men's teams were club sports. One has to wonder about the wisdom of these cuts, especially at UC, where the women's rowing team had leveled charges against the Athletic Department that the quality of departmental assistance they were receiving did not necessarily help make the school Title IX-compliant.
posted by theoarsman at 20:11
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