Expect deficit decisions to impact athletes
Decrease of 4 - 6 per cent will lead to cuts from Campus Rec, Facilities or Varsity
By Ryan Rogers
Sports Editor
March 26, 2008
 With the University of Windsor commanding all of their departments to roll back their budgets to compensate for a deficit brought on by damagingly low enrolment numbers from this past year, the Athletics Department will be faced with the tough decision of what to cut.
Director of Athletics, Gord Grace, said that low enrolment numbers have made for a “double whammy.”
The funding that the Athletics Department receives from students is directly linked to student numbers, so they have already felt the impact of the lower enrolment, but this order to further reduce the budget is making the squeeze even tighter.
Grace said his department is in discussions with the UWSA to see if students are interested in an increase to their fees as a remedy to the fiscal troubles.
The enrolment projects were set in May, said Grace, and they influenced what funds were available for the Fall 2007 semester.
“That’s pretty hard in September to start pulling back things,” he said. By the beginning of the year, the department would already have committed to offering programming, teams and hired staff.
“One of our challenges is that our fee is pretty low compared to other fees in the province. It’s the same song and dance, but the statistics don’t lie. If we have our costs rising and our fee is not significant enough and the university is asking for something like that (four to six per cent cut), then obviously you’re going to have to make cuts,” said Grace.
He continued, “‘Cuts’ is a very strong word, I guess really what we’re trying to do is ‘right size’ our operations to our budget… What’s the right size of programs that we can offer and services that we can offer based on what the budget is?”
“So, downsize? I guess right size is a nicer word, but we need to find out what’s right for us. So we’re looking at all facets of our operations, what sports are important, what’s a priority, and where’s opportunity,” he continued.
Grace said that the athletics department has three major tasks at hand, and they are campus recreation, maintaining the facilities and varsity sports. The funds could be removed from one targeted area or they could be removed as a percentage across the entire department.
“You could cut across the board, in terms of budget, where everyone gets knocked five per cent,” said Grace, “or you can be more strategic and say, ‘Ok, we’re going to look at programs or teams.’”
Last year when funding was in a pinch, the Lancers rugby team was put on the chopping block, before an outpouring of support for the team led the UWSA to renege on a motion revoking a consumer price index adjustment in student fees towards the athletics department. This year, it could be the men’s hockey team that is put under the microscope.
With the resignation of the men’s hockey coach Pete Belliveau last week, Grace said that the entire hockey team will have to be reevaluated, but he isn’t yet prepared to cut any varsity teams.
“It’s not about hockey, it’s about our varsity programs,” said Grace. “We look at all facets of our programs with campus recreation, facilities and varsity and that’s the essential three areas that we’re given. So we look at making possible reductions in those areas. In terms of varsity sports, we just don’t pick one out and say, ‘Ok this is the one we’re targeting.’ We’ve gone through, in the past, and did our evaluations on different teams on different criteria. If we needed to remove a team, it would be based on that criteria.”
“When we evaluate teams,” said Grace, “we evaluate key factors.” These factors include the quality of the coaching, the expense of the sport, the facilities, student interest, competitiveness of the team in its league, and alumni and media interest.
Hypothetically, Grace elaborated, “You can look at track and field. Ok, track and field has quality coaching, quality facilities, competes at the national level and services both male and females… so that one’s not going to get infringed in any way. That’s an obvious one, but for the other [teams] it’s not so obvious. There are strengths and weaknesses to different programs.”
Grace says they will likely not cut back on campus recreation, as it serves about 4,000 participants. “This year we introduced expansion in the men’s intramural hockey and paid for additional ice time... we may have to pull back the number of teams in that league,” he suggested.
“In terms of facilities,” said Grace, “maybe we have to delay buying some new equipment and things of this nature.”
Last week Grace visited other universities like Waterloo and Guelph, to gather best practices, to see how other institutions deal with challenges in their budgets.
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