“Cal to cut men's baseball, gymnastics” plus 1 more

Posted: 11 Feb 2011 09:04 PM PST

UC Berkeley announced Friday that its men's baseball and gymnastics programs will be eliminated at the end of 2010-11 school year but that men's rugby and women's gymnastics and lacrosse have been spared.

Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary said baseball did not come close to generating enough private funding to save the 119-year-old program.

"The challenge for baseball was bigger," he said. "They needed four to five to six times as much as they raised to have been in a position to be maintained."

However, Cal baseball coach David Esquer said he doesn't think the battle is over.

"I don't think you're going to be writing the obituary of Cal baseball at this point in time," he said. "This is obviously a huge setback. I believe at some point in time, maybe not in my time here at Cal, that there will be Cal baseball again. I believe that. I really do."

Bob Milano, who coached Cal baseball for 22 seasons before retiring in 1999, was highly critical of the university.

"I'm very sad that the University of California did not hold true to what they stated, that it was all or none," he said. "I believe they don't know what they're doing."

Yeary said of the $25 million targeted by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to save the five sports for a period of seven to 10 years, baseball's costs required supporters to raise $10 million. He said their figure was in the range of $1.5 million to $2.5 million.

Yeary explained that supporters of

the five sports raised $12 million to $13 million, of which at least $8 million was without strings attached. The remaining amount came from donors whose money may have been earmarked for baseball or men's gymnastics.

The $8 million is sufficient to operate the three sports that were saved while they develop a plan for permanent self-sufficient status. The amount that baseball generated would have kept the program afloat for only two years, according to Cal officials.

"From the very beginning, we said we could not afford stopgap measures; we needed to move on to permanent solutions," Yeary said.

Doug Nickel, a former Cal baseball player who helped organize the Save Cal Sports group, argued that the amount of money raised in four months should have persuaded the university to show more patience.

"Is it not easily conceivable that with two years we could do what it takes to endow these two programs for life?" he said. "I don't think that's a stretch."

A's pitcher Tyson Ross, a Cal alum, said: "It's definitely disappointing to know the school decided to cut baseball and men's gymnastics. I do know Title IX played a part, and budget cuts were an issue. It's just too bad they couldn't work harder to find a solution, because in the end, I think they could have found a way to keep them. But I think they took the easy way out.

"It's a devastating day today."

The university had announced in September that all five sports would be eliminated after this school year to save the athletic department $4 million annually.

But a news release issued by the university Friday said the decision to drop baseball and men's gymnastics, and keeping the other three sports in question, has Cal athletics on track to operate under a cap of no more than $5 million annually from the general campus fund by 2014.

The two women's programs may have survived because Cal would have been in violation of federal Title IX gender-equity laws had they been cut. Doing so would have required the university to slice as many as 80 athletes from its men's teams while adding 50 women to its rosters to meet Title IX requirements for proportionality.

"When we originally decided to cut them, we knew there would be some Title IX roster management that would be required," Yeary said.

Those plans already were in the works. Travis Bickham, a member of the men's water polo team, told the New York Times that his team was told it would have lost 13 players next fall, going from 41 to 28.

Yeary said that neither baseball nor men's gymnastics will be on the 2011-12 athletic calendar. But athletic director Sandy Barbour said there may be an opportunity in the future to bring back baseball if it becomes privately endowed.

Of the 24 NCAA Division I level athletic programs in the state, Cal will be the only one without a baseball team.

"All of our programs at Cal have a rich history and tradition and meaningful opportunities for student-athletes," Barbour said. "To lose any of them is certainly a sad day for us."

Cal has fielded a baseball team since 1892, and it won national championships in 1947 and 1957. Ten former Cal baseball players will be on the rosters of major league teams when spring training begins next week, including the A's Ross.

The Bears open their 2011 season Feb. 18 at home against Utah.

"We're all mad," said second baseman Tony Renda, a graduate of Serra High in San Mateo and a freshman All-American last season. "Thirty-six of us stuck around, and we're going to give this thing a go. We're a dangerous team. We're really good. And we're playing for ourselves."

One source told the Bay Area News Group that the property where Evans Diamond sits is coveted by the university for nonathletic purposes, but Birgeneau said Friday that the school has no current plans for such use.

Men's gymnastics, which began competition at Cal in 1922, won four NCAA team titles from 1968 to 1998 and has had top-10 finishes in 13 of the past 14 seasons. However, the sport slowly has been squeezed from athletic agendas on the West Coast, with Stanford the only other Pac-10 school to field a team.

Friday's survivors didn't feel much like celebrating.

"I am thrilled for my ladies and future young gymnasts," Cal women's gymnastics coach Cari DuBois said from Tempe, Ariz., where the Bears were competing Friday night against Arizona State. "But I definitely have mixed emotions because I'm saddened for the men's teams that weren't reinstated. We train with the men every day."

Cal rugby coach Jack Clark, whose team was playing Friday at an event in Las Vegas, said he was grateful that his program was reinstated to varsity status, rather than demoted to a club sport.

"We always believed our place was in intercollegiate athletics, and I'm glad we were given an opportunity by the university to make our case," he said. "We're really humbled to be a part of intercollegiate athletics next season and beyond."

Rugby is UC Berkeley's most successful sports program, having won 25 national championships since 1980, including the 2010 title.

A nonscholarship varsity sport at Berkeley, rugby largely has been supported through private funding. Rugby will retain its varsity status but now must shoulder all direct and indirect costs, including coaches' salaries and use of Cal's training and sports medicine facilities.

The university said rugby contributions were sufficient to help support women's gymnastics and lacrosse.

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Cal to save 3 sports, cut baseball, gymnastics

Posted: 12 Feb 2011 12:23 AM PST

Michael Macor / The Chronicle

California's Keegan Engelbrecht, Eric Fry and Colin Hawley, (left to right) celebrate the championship win as the Bears beat BYU 19-7 in the USA Rugby National College Championship game last May in Palo Alto.

(02-11) 20:23 PST -- An effort by Cal sports supporters and officials to save five teams ended Friday with mixed results.

UC Berkeley announced that men's rugby, women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse would remain as varsity programs, less than five months after Cal announced the teams would have to be cut or demoted to varsity club status because of the UC system's financial crisis.

But baseball and men's gymnastics will not be retained, officials said. As of July 1, Cal will be the only NCAA Division I school in the state without a baseball team. It will be without a national power in men's gymnastics, in which it has won four NCAA team titles.

The decision on which teams to keep and which to drop was based on a mix of financial and gender-equity issues. After a fundraising push on behalf of all the teams, rugby was deemed to have met Cal's financial standard for reinstatement. The resurrection of women's lacrosse and women's gymnastics keeps the school in compliance with Title IX, a federal law that has played a key role in providing equal opportunity for women in college sports.

"Certainly I'm pleased that the efforts of our community are going to allow us to preserve these three sports," Athletic Director Sandy Barbour said. "I'm saddened ... that we would lose any program. To lose any of them is certainly a sad day for us."

Something to scream about

Members of the saved teams have a new lease on athletic life.

Tori Harrison, a junior defender on Cal's lacrosse team, said, "I woke up to screams with my roommate this morning. ... We are ecstatic. We are in shock. We both got the text from our coach (Theresa Sherry) this morning at 9:30. We ran into each other's rooms and started crying."

Cal reduced the cuts it had announced in September after determining that a "Save Cal Sports" campaign led by alumni and parents raised $12 million to $13 million in pledges. The university expects $8 million of that to be available to sustain men's rugby, women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse for the next seven to 10 years. The rest of the pledges and future gifts would be needed to sustain the programs further into the future.

According to a university statement, "Rugby has committed to support its own costs as well as to contribute to the stabilization of the women's programs."

"Proud, grateful," was how rugby coach Jack Clark described his reaction to the outcome. "I'm really proud of our rugby supporters for once again stepping up. It's fantastic in this crisis to see them do it one more time. We're going to contribute to bringing these two women's teams back and to help others. Pride is the word that comes to mind. To be able to make good on this challenge is a damn good feeling."

With a nod to Clark's program, Harrison, the lacrosse player, said, "Yes, rugby has a huge legacy. They were able to do a ton of work, and we couldn't be more grateful."

The original plan - to eliminate baseball, lacrosse and men's and women's gymnastics while downgrading rugby to a varsity club sport - was devised to save $4 million a year, reducing the $12 million annual subsidy given to the athletic department by the university. The university wants to reduce its subsidy of intercollegiate athletics to $5 million annually by 2014.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said the marshaling of donors to help retain the sports began only when their imminent demise was announced.

Birgeneau said he described the crisis to major sports backers a year and four months ago. "My message engendered no response for an entire year. The response only came after the announcement. It wasn't until then that we got the wonderful response we have now."

Baseball figures disputed

UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary said Cal baseball, which with a net annual loss of about $1 million cost the university more than any other team, raised $1.5 million to $2.5 million in pledges.

Former Cal baseball player Doug Nickle, a leader of the "Save Cal Sports" campaign, sharply disagreed with Yeary's numbers. He said $5 million to $7 million had been raised for baseball and men's gymnastics.

In response to Nickle's contention, a university spokesman said the university stood by its figures. The university holds that baseball needed $10 million to be resurrected for at least the next seven seasons. Yeary said that it is feasible that baseball could be reinstated at some time after the 2011-12 school year, if enough funds are raised.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Gymnastics Sports

Saturday, February 12, 2011