As of 8:10am this morning one of the finer programs in the country is lost due to "budgetary" problems.
No one saw it coming and they just recently signed some top level recruits that gave them one of the top 3 recruiting classes in the country.
Pools come from donors, one way or another - that seems almost always the case with one Div. III conference:
At one of the last of the men’s liberal arts colleges, there’s The Class of 1950 Natatorium: www.wabash.edu/.../facility ...
The Timken Natatorium marks a donation to by the maker of ball bearings to the small college in its community: athletics.wooster.edu/.../natatorium.php ...
This pool, www.oberlin.edu/.../photo1.html , honors a long-serving and much-loved college president
www.oberlin.edu/.../RobertCarr.html who retired in the same year the college built its pool.
In the same Div. III conference, a new $59-million facility is breaking ground - it's part of a larger facilities program but it's unlikely the donors were surprised to hear there's a new pool along with some chemistry facilities: www.collegeswimming.com/.../
Here’s an interesting approach to sports fund-raising in this conference: the "Remember Branch Rickey” campaign mrrickey.owu.edu/pledge.html ... Mr. Rickey, an alum of Ohio Wesleyan, was known for signing Jackie Robinson, but he “also was credited with developing the farm system of minor league teams while with the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1920s and 1930s and pioneering the use of batting helmets while with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1950s. After retiring from the Pirates, his plans to begin a third major league helped prompt the first expansion of Major League Baseball.”
But, when a Div. I men’s team is cut, the issue seems to be the operating budget, not the pool (i.e., the capital budget). Check out UCLA’s great facilities:
www.recreation.ucla.edu/.../facilities_sub.aspxwww.recreation.ucla.edu/.../facilities_sub.aspx
As the Dartmouth example shows, it's a lot harder to raise money for an operating budget. For the Div. III schools, facilities account for proportionately a larger share of the budget (they travel mostly in their regions, they give no scholarships, and the facilities serve a lot of other recreational programs as well). The operating budget is higher if you aspire to compete, as ASU did, in a tough conference. If you want to fund an annual operating budget of more than $2 million through an endowment, you might need donations of more than $25 million - apart from facilities costs and Title IX impacts. Such a number is a challenge for a place like Dartmouth; it would seem to be a much larger challenge at a big public school with so many competing demands and needs ...
Pools come from donors, one way or another - that seems almost always the case with one Div. III conference:
At one of the last of the men’s liberal arts colleges, there’s The Class of 1950 Natatorium: www.wabash.edu/.../facility ...
The Timken Natatorium marks a donation to by the maker of ball bearings to the small college in its community: athletics.wooster.edu/.../natatorium.php ...
This pool, www.oberlin.edu/.../photo1.html , honors a long-serving and much-loved college president
www.oberlin.edu/.../RobertCarr.html who retired in the same year the college built its pool.
In the same Div. III conference, a new $59-million facility is breaking ground - it's part of a larger facilities program but it's unlikely the donors were surprised to hear there's a new pool along with some chemistry facilities: www.collegeswimming.com/.../
Here’s an interesting approach to sports fund-raising in this conference: the "Remember Branch Rickey” campaign mrrickey.owu.edu/pledge.html ... Mr. Rickey, an alum of Ohio Wesleyan, was known for signing Jackie Robinson, but he “also was credited with developing the farm system of minor league teams while with the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1920s and 1930s and pioneering the use of batting helmets while with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1950s. After retiring from the Pirates, his plans to begin a third major league helped prompt the first expansion of Major League Baseball.”
But, when a Div. I men’s team is cut, the issue seems to be the operating budget, not the pool (i.e., the capital budget). Check out UCLA’s great facilities:
www.recreation.ucla.edu/.../facilities_sub.aspxwww.recreation.ucla.edu/.../facilities_sub.aspx
As the Dartmouth example shows, it's a lot harder to raise money for an operating budget. For the Div. III schools, facilities account for proportionately a larger share of the budget (they travel mostly in their regions, they give no scholarships, and the facilities serve a lot of other recreational programs as well). The operating budget is higher if you aspire to compete, as ASU did, in a tough conference. If you want to fund an annual operating budget of more than $2 million through an endowment, you might need donations of more than $25 million - apart from facilities costs and Title IX impacts. Such a number is a challenge for a place like Dartmouth; it would seem to be a much larger challenge at a big public school with so many competing demands and needs ...
