To All -
I graduated from Dartmouth in 1976 - swam varsity all 4 years.
There is a little more to the issue of Dartmouth eliminating Swimming & Diving that has not been touched on in this thread. The issue is far more than the $211K it costs to operate the men's and women's teams.
The real issue is tha natatorium is 40 years old. It was a darn good pool in the 60's and 70's and is still a nice pool for practicing, but by Division 1 standards of the Ivy League, it has a long way to go.
The estimated cost for a new facility is $20 - 25MM and there is not a good location for it to be built and, unlike the other Ivy League schools which are in major metro areas, the opportunity to generate revenue from a new facility is very limited.
So, why build a great big facility for 53 athletes and some swim classes that won't generate a significant amount of revenue compared to other sports facilities that get used more?
It is a business decision that I have mixed feelings about. I understand their point even though I am sad about it. And, face it, Dartmouth swimming hasn't exactly set the Ivy League world on fire during the past 25 years.
Some might say a better facility would draw better swimmers, but I don't think so. You go to Dartmouth for the education and experience of a rural campus in the green paradise of New Hampshire. You don't go there because you are a world class athlete in any of the sports they have there. If you are national caliber and go there, it just happens that way.
Peter Crumbine - your thoughts.....?
Paul Windrath
I don't know if we can preserve all college swim teams. Some states like California even have it at the community college level. On the other hand, Cal-State Fullerton also in California no longer has a swim team, the last team was in the 1970's. They even dropped football in the early 1990's. But Fullerton is a communter school where many students have to work at least 30 hours a week and most of the students have little interest in what Fullerton does in a particular sport. Darthmouth is the tradtional elite school, where either you have a high GPA or come from a upper or higher income family background. I suppose that division 1 schools are more important to preserve their programs, yet I don't think that every college needs to have all sports at that college. Fullerton has great softball and baseball teams, yet they dropped Football, Swimming, Water Polo and Golf, sports they were not that good at.
In the late seventies my college team swam against Dartmouth. Generally they were a better team, and one of the highlights of my college career was winning the 200 fly 2 or 3 times in dual meets against them.
I am saddened by the demise of this team.
I do not think that a small college in the middle of nowhere needs to maintain travelling squads in every sport. I can see the logic of Dartmouth's decision to eliminate a small sport, rather than share cost cuts among all the teams, in a time of tough budgets.
On the other hand, the cost of the swim team is small compared to the budget of the football team. Though no one from Dartmouth has publicly said it, given the equipment costs, travel costs, and size of competitive teams, football is one sport that I find hard for Dartmouth to justify.
Dartmouth does, indeed, have a football team. One of the purported justifications given by Dartmouth's administration for eliminating swimming was to avoid "sacrifices" by other sports. My guess is that means football.
Now, some have a good argument for Darthmouth. But what about the commuter colleges and community colleges. I don't see why they have to preserve swimming and other sports at all their campuses, since many people are going to school and working full time and are not involved with sports teams. The cal-state system which is a commuter college system doesn't have football or swimming at all its colleges. And I was someone that swam at the community college level back in the 1970's. For many swimmers, school swimming eventually comes to a end. In Arizona many swimmers at my level as a teenager would not have swam at the college level since their is no community college program swim team. Many schools like Cal-State Fullerton and Cal-State Long Beach got rid of both football and other sports. It isn't always the case where a school keeps football and gets rid of another sport.
On the face of it Paul's comments make sense but I have a very different perspective re th e new facility. My connections to Dartmouth are indirect, that is through my wife's family, some of whom still live in Hanover. I do think that with more forward looking administration and planning Dartmouth could have a swim team and updated facility. Paul is right on when we says one cannot justify a brand-new natatorium for a competitiv swim team. HOWEVER, Dartmouth can make a good case for a new student fitness facility that includes a new pool. Such facilities are fast becoming a necessity to attract the best students to campuses (see Univ of MD, MIT and recently approved Kenyon facility). These facilities include fitness centers (the MIT facility as 12,000 square feet and Kenyon will have 15,000 sf), squash courts, multi-purpose courts (in-line hocky, basketball, etc) and various other spaces for students to congregate. These facilities somewhat more than 25m as quoted by Paul BUT the pool component (if kept to a basic 50 meter pool that is not designed to host large meets) is less than 50% of the total cost. These facilities serve the general community quite well.
Kenyon obviously has a very successful swim program and it has become one of the most important sports at that school. The $40 million new student fitness facility (include a new 50 meter pool) was not designed exclusively to support the varsity program. The pool while an improvement over the existing facility was basically designed to be an excellent training facility and good venue for duel meets but was clearly not designed to be a state-of-the-art competitive aquartic center. The real secret to the success of getting that facility is the non-swimming components of the new center (fitness center, student lounges/labs, etc).
Those of us who care about swimming at the college level need to rethink how we present the benefits of building new pools. As others have pointed out it's pretty hard to justify building new 50 meter pools to support varsity programs (how can you spend $25 million for such a narrow purpose when science/art programs also need new facilities). However, student fitness centers that serve the entire community have great promise because they serve the larger community and are becoming increasingly necessary part of campus life. At the risk of stating the obvious, such centers present tremendous opportunities to grow masters since many students who do not participate in varsity swimming might find masters a very attractive way to continue their interest in "organized" swimming.
There are problems with building a student rec. facility as well. UCSB built a beautiful one a few years back but it was strictly limited to recreational use.
Apparently when the student body voted on increasing their dues to fund the facility they made it clear that they would not be the "ugly stepchild of varisty sports".
So, the swimming and water polo teams are still training in a pool that I believe was built in the late 50s. I heard that the water polo team may have negotiated the use of the new pool for 5 home games this past season (a big help since the old pool has a shallow end which I enjoyed pushing off of in my polo days!)
I can't fathom where people in the administrative ranks are coming up with figures like these for the cost of aquatic facilities. A few months ago, Splash Magazine ran a nice feature article about a club team from Kentucky that built a 10-lane, 50m facility for just about $2.5M a couple years ago. Now assuming inflation has not caused the cost of goods and services to rise 1000% since 2000 (hey, it doesn't cost $20 for a loaf of bread), one can safely guess that a similar, high-quality facility could be constructed at a cost around $3M. No?
What's the proverb (or whatever they call those little sayings) "Penny-wise, pound foolish". They're saying that saving $212,000 a year will relieve them of their budget problems? At a school with a multi-BILLION dollar endowment? At bank-rate interest levels (~2.00%) they would make enough in interest in 2 DAYS ($263,000) on their 2.4B endowment to cover the cost of their swim team.
Nebraska too... what were they thinking? Cutting a $200-$300K athletic program will solve their problems when they give out $1.1M in athletic department BONUSES??? Or Iowa State spending $11M on a football PRACTICE FACILITY so they had to cut swimming to make ends meet? A joke.
Regards,
RM
Hey, this issue made the AP wire:
www.nytimes.com/.../AP-Dartmouth-Ebay.html
by the way, Paul, that was a good joke:
You go to Dartmouth for the education and experience of a rural campus in the green paradise of New Hampshire.
When I was in Hanover, there was only one color - white (and more white). ;)
Was the Kentucky pool indoors?
