The athletic programs set for elimination are men's and women's gymnastics, men's and women's water polo, women's volleyball, men's tennis and men's indoor track. Combined, 136 students participate on the seven teams, 48 of whom are on scholarship. The cuts will leave 22 varsity teams remaining at the University.
The UMass athletic department expects that these cuts will trim $1.1 million from their roughly $18 million budget, based on last year's numbers. Four full-time head coaching positions and two full-time assistant coaching positions will also be eliminated, along with several part-time jobs.
UMass officials ultimately decided to limit the cuts in the athletic budget to just a few programs rather than to force all sports in the department to reduce their operating budgets. Thus, many small programs are being purged entirely from the University, while a larger sport like football, which has an annual operating budget of several million dollars, will not see any cuts to its funding.
"When you are trying to save $1 million, the ideal way is to trim a little from each sport," said Amherst College Athletic Director Peter Gooding. "But that strategy probably didn't work at UMass because they likely concluded that they couldn't save enough money without severely damaging too many different sports."
In the late 1980s, Gooding oversaw significant budget cuts within the College's athletic department. In response to projected budget shortfalls in the athletic department, the College changed men's and women's crew and men's and women's skiing from varsity to club sports. In addition, the College consolidated the men's and women's indoor track teams into one single team and cut the junior varsity sport program, as well as enacting modest budget cuts on all other varsity sports.
"We cut five programs then and I remember how incredibly painful that was because, in effect, we were forced to tell some students that they were better than others," said Gooding.
"That is not a position you want to find yourself in. I feel very, very sorry for [UMass Athletic Director Robert] Marcum because this process is very demoralizing," Gooding added.
The decision to cut the seven varsity teams at UMass came following comprehensive discussions among members of the athletic department and the University.
"This was not something we wanted to do, but we were directed by the University to cut our budget and so we did," said Senior Associate Athletic Director Al Rufe.
After debating several different proposals internally, the athletic department presented their recommendations to members of the Athletic Trust Committee, a representative from the office of UMass President William Bulger and a representative of the Chancellor's office before a general consensus was reached.
"We ultimately decided that it was better to focus our cuts on a few programs rather than drag all the programs in the department down," said Rufe. "But there are valid arguments on the other side of the coin because there are good students and coaches throughout the department."
On one occasion in the past decade, the UMass athletic department eliminated a sports program only to have it resurface shortly thereafter, but Rufe is doubtful that a similar outcome will occur in this case.
"I feel these cuts will happen because the fiscal problems throughout the state of Massachusetts are so severe right now," he said.
The University announced its budget cuts in late January. In addition to reducing the athletic budget, the University cut its child care and security programs, along with some academic departments.
"This was an operationally driven process," said UMass Chancellor Marcellette Williams when announcing the University budget cuts in January. "We had to cut millions [of dollars] from the budget."