I saw this on Twitter …
twitter.com/gymnasttwit and twitter.com/InsideGym
Sad.
It’s economics. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has more varsity sports than they can fund.
… cut … spending by $1.45 million over three years; the cut amounts to a sharp 24% reduction in spending out of general Institute funds. … current annual budget is $12.9 million. …
Both Men’s and Women’s Teams will be cut. Losing a Men’s team hurts the Collegiate program worse than the Women’s, however, because the Men have so few teams left.
UPDATE:
… Last season, the MIT men finished the season ranked 19 out of 20 men’s teams, qualifying three individuals to NCAAs. The women were 76th out of 84 squads. Both programs have had success in the USA Gymnastics-sponsored alternate collegiate nationals. …
… MIT left the door open for club programs to be created for the eliminated teams. …
read more on Inside Gymnastics – MIT ELIMINATES MEN’S AND WOMEN’S GYMNASTICS
9 comments ↓
Well that sucks.
As much as it does suck, I can almost hardly blame them. Besides the sheer money factor/revenue the sport doesn’t generate compared to the big sports, it’s just difficult for administrations/boards to see the point (though, to be sure, I do believe that in the spirit of a university, any sport should exist if there are participants and coaches willing to put in the time, regardless of whether it loses money or not, because variety and options, etc. are important to a school for diversity purposes).
March Madness is exciting because of the parity. There are big names that consistently make the big dance, but we’re ok with that because there are enough upsets to make it worth investing fan-energy into the sport. There are no upsets in NCAA gymnastics. In 20+ years, 4 teams have won. That’s got to be fairly boring to lay-fans.
Sure, small programs may have a shot at doing well in their division, but then at that level, there’s so few teams that it’s almost not exciting there, either. That’s a weird position for a sport to be in: top-heavy monsters, and suffocating baby players. That can’t be conducive to survival.
People can hold out for a long time when they think there’s hope; schools will dump money into programs with even a slight hope of success, year after year. But not if there’s no hope. I don’t think too many people (read: budget-approvers) are willing to pour money into a system that, even when it’s good, even when it has good people involved in it, smart/talented coaches with smart/talented guys/girls who work hard and do all the things they should be doing, just doesn’t have a shot in hell at drumming up media buzz and attention for their school.
Frankly, up until a year ago, I wasn’t even aware MIT had a gymnastics program, and when I learned it did, I was shocked.
*there are
Eliminated 8 sports (10 programs total) and saved only 500k. What a joke!
That’s sad
I don’t know much about college gymnastics in the US to be honest, only from reading updates on twitter and new blog posts have I seen how big it seems. What options do those gymnasts now have? Do normal gym clubs have a way that they can still enter college competitions?
It’s a little sad, but sports is becoming less and less something that is done by the regular students and only something for scholarship athletes. Also Americans more and more sedantary.
Gym is a great sport, but I can see how it would be in the gunsights compared to others sports than need less equipment and the like.
As a recent Springfield College Men’s Gymnastics alum, this is extremely saddening to me and the Springfield team. Not only do we hurt for those on both of the gymnastics team, but it makes us worry about ourselves… Springfield Men’s Gymnastics is now the ONLY division III gymnastics program left in the entire country. What will happen to us? Are we the next to go? MIT gymnastics has recently become a strong program. They have very talented men and women who deserve to continue gymnastics at their institution. I have heard talk about their entire gym being demolished to make way for sports that are being kept, which means that there is no way they could support a club team… This is simply talk, but hopefully it is not true, this way they could at least still have a club team.
Since I was a Junior in High School, I have seen 4 collegiate men’s programs drop. UMass, Southern CT., JMU, and now MIT. That’s in less than 10 years…
I’m seriously nervous that collegiate men’s gymnastics will no longer exist in my life time…
They could support a club team by training at a local gymnastics club.
As a former College Gymnast and Assistant coach (Springfield College) I too am sad to see MIT go.
This all flows from an unintended consequence from many years ago. One that came about by Rec. Centers, School Systems and the likes slowly decided to concentrate on sports any Tom Dick and Harry could play. Ones they felt they could serve more masses with less staff. They choose ball sports.
This created a monopoly. Monopolies promote and feed themselves by their very nature. Sports that seemingly lost interest was NOT cause they are lesser sports…. it simply was because they were not in the Monopoly.
Monopoly built power, feed itself funds, took it from others, got its athletes free ball fields, school Fields, stadiums. Like Monopolies do…. they squeezed out all others.
This Monopoly has done much to Kill the Olympic Spirit, The Olympic Sports.
An unintended dynamic… that brought us these realities.
Question remains… and no one has sought to take it on; their to scared, but the fact remains.
TIME TO BREAK THE MONOPOLY!!
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