Hundreds of student-athletes at St. Cloud State University were called into a campus auditorium Wednesday and told that six athletic programs are being eliminated in a cost-saving move that also will require roster reductions in football and other men’s sports.
The programs shutting down after this school year, affecting about 80 athletes, are men’s and women’s tennis, women’s Nordic skiing, men’s cross-country and men’s indoor/outdoor track and field. The cuts were announced by athletic director Heather Weems at a departmental meeting.
The university said the cuts will save that department $250,000, or about 5 percent of the athletic department’s general fund allocation in fiscal year 2017.
St. Cloud State President Earl H. Potter III said in the department meeting that the changes are part of a campuswide process connected to the university’s overall financial recovery plan.
St. Cloud State, like other public universities across the state, is dealing with falling enrollment and nagging deficits they are trying to shrink. SCSU enrollment stands at 15,461, down from 18,650 in the fall of 2010, a more dramatic drop than at many of its sister schools. It is currently battling a $6 million budget gap.
Steven Rosenstone, chancellor of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU), which includes St. Cloud State, said in an e-mail that “there are many kinds of cuts that presidents across the state are making in response to the shortfall in revenue” this biennium.
Students at the system’s four-year universities already felt a 3.4 percent tuition increase in the fall.
Rosenstone said state approval of MnSCU’s $21 million supplemental budget request, “will be critical to … protect high-demand programs, student support services such as academic advisers and counselors, and workforce training and development.” Last year he requested $142 million in extra funds from the Legislature, of which it granted $100 million.
For the St. Cloud State athletes, notification came swiftly, first to all of the school’s coaches during a meeting with administrators at 7:45 a.m., and then to 200 to 300 student-athletes barely 15 minutes later.
The auditorium was a mix of athletes learning that either their team is going dark or their squad’s roster is shrinking. Others amid those receiving the bad news breathed a sigh of relief that their program was escaping unscathed.
“To learn of it in the midst of everyone, sitting in a group, it was an awful, awkward feeling,” said Jerry Anderson, longtime head coach of the doomed men’s and women’s tennis teams.
Anderson said student-athletes — male and female — shed tears as they heard the news. “The shock factor hasn’t worn off,” he said as he drove to practice Wednesday afternoon.
Thomas Nelson, interim director of athletic media relations, said there really was “no good way” to notify so many people across so many programs at once of this type of news. “It was an emotional day for everybody.”
In the wake of the shake-up, St. Cloud must adjust the size of some of the rosters in the remaining 17 programs in order to meet Title IX’s federal gender-equity requirements. Men’s baseball, football, wrestling and swimming and diving will see smaller rosters. Women’s indoor and outdoor track will see gains. The school’s hockey teams, its only programs in the NCAA’s top division, are actually gaining a roster spot each.
Nelson said he doesn’t anticipate any reconsideration for these eliminated programs anytime soon. “There doesn’t seem to be a contingency to bring any of these back,” he said.
The school said that the criteria considered when weighing cuts to athletics were: the history and tradition of the programs, available facilities and their conditions, recent competitive success, investment needs, alumni engagement and financial support and regional interest.
Nordic ski coach Jeremy Frost said he and his fellow head coaches “were told several times” that Title IX requirements would keep the women’s teams immune from elimination or roster reductions, “so we were shocked to hear of cuts to women’s sports.”
Wrestling coach Steve Costanzo, whose program brought St. Cloud its first national title in any sport in school history, said it had been “rumored for a while” that his roster would be taking a hit.
“The hardest part is the team is so close,” said Costanzo, adding that expectations are high for the team to defend its national championship. “These guys are part of my family.
NCAA qualifier Clayton Jennissen, a junior wrestler, said he’s trying to stay focused on the national meet, but greeted the news with a glass-half-full attitude. “It’s better than getting cut, like some of the other teams,” he said.
For those athletes left without a program, the university said it will honor current scholarship agreements for up to four years for those who wish to continue at St. Cloud State. Also, the university said coaches from other schools can contact student-athletes about transfer opportunities.
Elsewhere in state
Other comparable schools in the state said they didn’t foresee planned cuts to their athletic programs.
At Minnesota State University Mankato, which operates at a similar level in athletics with St. Cloud State, three sports were dropped in 2010-11. “We’ve been through this,” said athletic department spokesman Pall Allan. “You hate to see opportunities go away for kids. It’s not a good day anytime you see something like this.”
Looking ahead to any further potential cuts at Mankato, Allan said he sees “nothing on the horizon.”
Bemidji State University dropped men’s indoor/outdoor track in 2011. Spokesman Andy Bartlett said the Beavers are in no position to shrink further, otherwise the school would lose its membership in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference.
