UND Cuts 3 Varsity Sports, Including Women's Hockey
GRAND FORKS, ND (trfnews.i234.me) The University of North Dakota announced today it’s cutting 3 varsity sports. Women’s hockey and men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs. WATCH THE ENTIRE NEWS CONFERENCE HERE.
hey Neil Berg here with some breaking news Brian Faison athletic director is supposed to be out here in a bit but here’s a news release just released deep budget cuts force UND to eliminate three varsity sports after the academic year und announced the discontinuence of its men’s baseball and golf programs in the prior fiscal year that will disc that it will discontinue varsity women’s hockey and men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs effective at the end of the 201617 academic year as part of the university’s ongoing budget restructuring efforts efforts the continuence of the men’s golf program is contingent upon its successful fundraising efforts all right again UND has announced the following UND has announced following the discontinu discontinuence of its men’s baseball and golf programs in the prior fiscal year that it will discontinue its varsity women’s hockey and men and women’s swimming and diving programs effective at the end of the 201617 academic year as part of the university’s ongoing budget restructuring efforts I’ll introduce athletic director Brian Fesison on here shortly but a quick rundown of how we’ll do things Brian will come up and make some opening remarks and then he will take questions from the media while at the podium once he’s finished taking questions from the podium we’ll break off excuse me and Brian and President Kennedy will be available for your one-on-one interview requests just track down myself or Peter Johnson where’s Peter at right here in the front and we’ll make sure we make that happen for you so with that I will introduce the athletic director at the University of North Dakota Mr brian Faith on let me first apologize for us being a little late getting started here we just came back from meeting with the team and the head coaches this is a day that I had hoped to to never revisit but we are here and it’s a sad day when opportunities for student athletes are are again being reduced today we’re going to be announcing formally you’ve already got the press releases that we’re discontinuing the women’s ice hockey program and men’s and women’s swim and diving programs as part of the university’s mandated budget restructurings the decision being made was reached upon President Kennedy’s budget reduction instructions conference sport sponsorship requirements for both the Big Sky and the Summit League title 9 compliance additional Summit League sponsorship requirements and the ability to reinvest in championship programs UND will honor all athletic scholarships for discontinued sports at present equivalencies for returning student athletes and we’re we’re addressing anything we can do to assist anyone who wants to to to transfer so with with that being said um I will open it up for questions you envisioning down the road that you have to will have to develop more partnerships private business advertising so on and so forth keep funding going forward every year that I’ve been here those areas have increased but obviously keeping pace with costs and issues with changing conference affiliations and how things have escalated in in the athletic business particularly on our side with the division one transition it’s always a challenge and we’ve got to keep growing those areas the pro the challenge is continuing to grow those revenue sources but we’ve had records every year in fundraising we’ve had records in ticket sales we’ve had records in sponsorships but we still can’t get there did you look at any other programs for possible cuts i mean I guess can you explain to folks why women varsity hockey was the um at the end of the day we had the $1.3 million figure that was was there to meet the state man mandated reduction u for the university and then we had to deal with conference alignment situations because the summit league is a different situation for us and even though we’ll save money in the meantime there’s some cost issues that go into the summit league with increased scholarships so for example we’ve got we’ve got perhaps seven sports that are 85% scholarships and so five sports h have to be brought up so we had to re reinvest find a way to reinvest those dollars um we’re also as we said we’re concerned about compliance issues and making sure that from a competitive equity standpoint we’re we’re need to be and also from a title line compliance perspective we’re need to be as well and last but not least is we want to make sure that we have the opportunity as we can to reinvest in championship programs to make sure we sustain the the successes that we’ve seen this year he was talking about the title n title nine council he was walked us through review of our scenarios to make sure that our numbers were the numbers and making sure that we had addressed all the different elements of timeline the three prongs and going through that process Tom so um he was basically there to check us on all of our facts and figures and numbers and make some minor suggestions on maybe some things we want we want to take a look at but basically he was he was a majorly cross check on numbers to make sure we were we were looking at the right things do do you think this cycle will end this year or you just have to wait and see what happens with go to economy budget i mean is this are you hoping you don’t have to do this again next year well we’re down to we’re down to 17 or 18 sports depending on what happens for men’s golf so we’re we’re 16 is the number and you can’t go below that so we’re we’re not going to be entertaining that we’ll have to find some other if we have to deal with another hit i’m not sure what we’ll do but that won’t be an answer not really George but I’ll do it yes sir that’ll be the end of the end of this academic year that the programs are are officially done and we’ve already talked to the conference commissioners and we’ve done all the all those issues so they can get forward with their scheduling issues moving forward obviously women’s eyes can be the one most impacted from a scheduling standpoint yeah okay hey thank you Brian we will now break off for one-on-one interviews with Brian and President Kennedy I know there are a lot of non-media folks here we just ask that we let Brian and President Kennedy get their interview requests taken care of first so our media friends can do their jobs and be on their way so thank you everyone for coming
UND Cuts 3 Varsity Sports, Including Women's Hockey – trfnews.i234.me
