Today was a pretty sad day for the MIT athletics department as 8 sports were cut from varsity ranks. The sports DAPER dropped to club are Alpine Skiing, Golf, Men’s Ice Hockey, Women’s Ice Hockey, Men’s Gymnastics, Women’s Gymnastics, Pistol, and Wrestling. I don’t think it was really a surprise to anyone that these were the sports DAPER decided to cut, but its still a huge deal to the department. Not only do the athletes on these teams no longer have the opportunity to compete at a varsity level, but this decision also affects the coaches livelihood.
MIT’s actions also could have far reaching effects on other division III teams. One of MIT’s criteria for cutting sports was allegedly the amount and distance of competition. Without MIT’s pistol or Golf program other local colleges have less teams to compete against. How will this affect them?
Men’s division III just met the minimum requirement of 50 teams and could possibly have its own NCAA DIII tournament by 2011. If other schools cut mens volleyball this tournament will never get off the ground.
For now at least the men’s volleyball team is safe. It may seem a bit counter intuitive, but I think the mens team has the womens team partially to thank for this. Im sure the womens volleyball team would be one of the last to be cut because 1) they are very good 2) they are a womens sport so it helps with title IX and 3) they are one of the oldest womens programs. Since both the programs share a full time coach, I doubt the department would save much money by cutting mens volleyball.
Hopefully these really were a one time cut by DAPER and nothign like this has to happen again in the next few years as DAPER continues to cut budgets.
