As of July 1, 2012, seven varsity sports were officially cut from the University of Maryland’s athletic program, leaving 152 students to decide the fate of their athletic careers.
“If I was going to stop swimming, it was going to be on my own terms,” says Amy Halligan, a junior sports management major at Western Kentucky University. Halligan was once a Terp and a member of
Maryland’s swim and dive team, but she felt that her career of swimming and competing for 15 years was not meant to end. “I want to make very clear that each and every person on our team, and each and every athlete who was affected by the cuts made the best decision for themselves; whether that decision was to stay or transfer.”
Halligan was “raised a Terrapin.” She was part of a legacy of at least six family members who had earned degrees from University of Maryland. Her grandfather was a faculty member and both she and her sister were baptized in the Memorial Chapel on campus. However, her sport’s loss was more than enough for her to transfer. She says, “It felt like I got punched in the face by my best friend.”
It was Nov. 21, 2012 when President Wallace Loh accepted the 17-member panel recommendation to cut men and women’s swim and dive, men’s tennis, women’s water polo, acrobatics and tumbling, and all three men’s track and field teams in an attempt to fix the school’s possible $4 million deficit.
The outdoor track team is extended through 2013 because they reached the June 30 benchmark of
$940,000 in order to preserve the downsized 14-person sport. However, swim and dive only raised $184,716—a fraction of the $11.6 million they were expected to raise between late November and June 30. According to the Washington Post, all of the teams, together, were expected to raise more than $29 million; eight years’ worth of total program costs. President Loh and Athletic Director Kevin Anderson helped initiate the “Save Our Sports” campaign, which created fundraising websites and solicitation opportunities, but that was not enough.
Molly Brenner, a junior early childhood education major worked cheerleading competitions and sold T-shirts with her acrobatics and tumbling team. “Basically I did a lot of fundraising and worked many hours and was still unable to save my sport, which forced me to leave UMD.”
Brenner’s mother is a competitive cheerleading coach of 25 years, and she has dedicated 14 years to the sport. “Ever since about 7th grade, I looked up to the competitive cheerleaders at Maryland, and knew that this was the school that I wanted to go to.” She was brought to tears when the news was broken because these cuts changed her college career.
Although each athlete’s scholarship is still honored, Brenner explains that the longer her teammates were on the team, the higher amount of money each of them received. Because she was an out-of-state sophomore, her family could not continue to send her to the “school of her dreams.” She now lives at home in Northfield, N.J. where she coaches a team of younger girls in her mother’s gym.
Obviously, not all of the students left University of Maryland. Senior broadcast journalism and government and politics double major Haley Bull (swim and dive) and senior elementary education major Tricia Fitzgerald (acrobatics and tumbling) chose to stick with University of Maryland because of the time and dedication they had already put into their academic careers. Bull has been swimming since age 8 and Fitzgerald has cheerleaded since age 9.
“It was hard to even imagine life without swimming . . . but I am trying to move forward and focus on other things for this semester,” says Bull who is keeping herself busy this fall with an internship. “I’m just trying to live in the moment right now and take things day by day.”
“I did not know how desperate our university’s financial situation was and they clearly had been trying to keep it on the down-low,” says Fitzgerald, who questions the university’s spending tactics. This year, University of Maryland has put money toward seemingly small expenses such as brick crosswalks around freshmen dorms, but also much larger “privately funded” investments like the $3 million+ Byrd Stadium turf project.
“It is hurtful to see them investing in what seems to the general public as unnecessary expenses,” says Fitzgerald. “The worst part about [acrobatics and tumbling] being cut is that the University of Maryland was the leader and innovator of this sport. We were the first university to ever name competitive cheer as a sport, and lead the movement to create the National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association. University of Maryland prides itself for being a school full of innovators and inventors such as the creators of Google and Under Armour, and yet they cut such an innovative sport.”
Halligan quotes the president of Western Kentucky University, “The athletic department is the front porch of the university.” She says, “I think it’s safe to say that the community is not impressed with what Maryland’s front porch looks like.”