Dakota Foskey (West Johnston '12) is just one of hundreds of former North Carolina high school runners that have found success, support, and family bonds in one of the state's strongest track & cross country programs.
Here We Go Again.
When the announcement was made early last week that UNC Wilmington was going to eliminate nearly all of its highly successful running program, there was a collective sense of deja vu from the track & field community. We've seen this before at other schools, such as Winston-Salem State in 2012. This isn't even the first time that the UNCW program has faced the threat of dissolution; It seems that the track & field program at a university (especially on the men's side) is an easy target for cost-cutting measures, in an era when the budget for state universities has been shrinking.
This cut is particularly hard to understand given the success of the program over the past decade. The UNCW running program has generated 11 team championships in the Colonial Athletic Association, as well as 465 All-Conference performers. There has also been regional and national success: 7 NCAA Championship qualifiers, 92 NCAA Regional qualifiers, 13 Track & Field News nationally-ranked performers. Why would a school consider dropping what has arguably been its most successful program?
Counterintuitively, UNCW is not just cutting programs, but actually wants to ADD one as well - sand volleyball, in fact. It doesn't seem to make much sense to cut an established, strong women's program and add a brand new one, especially given that sand volleyball will most likely require a very large travel budget (only a handful of colleges east of the Mississippi even field a team).
Meanwhile, Seahawks Athletic Director Jimmy Bass makes well over $200,000 per year, and the UNCW Athletics Department employs 11 assistant athletic directors (including 4 "Senior Associates"). All of those positions, plus numerous others, are deemed necessary to supervise less than 400 total athletes (which would drop to less than 300 if the track programs are eliminated).
UNCW Announcement of "Adjustment in Sports Portfolio"
Different This Time?
UNCW Track & Field supporters are now rallying to try to pressure the administration to keep the sport, and to raise money for its continuation. (Rumors persist that these offers have been made directly to the UNCW athletic administration over the last two years, when an internal review made it clear that the program was in the cross hairs, but they were rebuffed.) By taking a stand and fighting for their program, the supporters of UNCW Track may send a larger message to other universities that are surely watching how the situation plays out. Track is the second-largest high school sport in the US (the first for girls), and our athletes need places to run in college! Members of the track & cross country community at any level can help in many ways, from writing letters to donating financially.