The men’s and women’s varsity cross country program at the University of Denver was cut completely and indefinitely last Friday.
The decision came suddenly and it surprised both the athletes and their coaches. The runners all got e-mails last Wednesday from the Athletic Department directors Dianne Murphy and Pam Wettig calling a meeting Friday morning. The coaches were informed an hour before the athletes were that the program was being cut due to budget problems.
“There were a lot of tears,” sophomore Mallory Delany, one of the runners, said about the decision.
Junior Julie Raffety said, “Actually, I’m not that surprised that the decision was made…and I’m really disappointed I don’t get to run my senior year.”
The athletes feel that the school has let them down by not giving them any kind of warning of the cut and offering them very little in the way of explanation for the decision.
Delany said, “It’s very upsetting to find out mid-year that your sport is being cut only to find out that an hour earlier, your coaches found out.”
Assistant Athletic Director, Wettig, said that the decision was not sudden and was the result of much debate and discussion. She said that the reason for the decision was not arbitrary.
Wettig said, “Nothing was very sudden…Part of the timing has to do with budget development. We certainly have the funds…the question is could we support it at the level we wanted to.”
Another concern of the team members is the fact that many of the athletes were on partial running scholarships. The scholarships will be honored, according to Wettig, until the end of this year but after that students will no longer receive athletic aide.
Several of the athletes went to the athletic directors after the meeting and tried to get some kind of explanation. Their efforts did not give them the results they were hoping for.
“We kept being told it was financial reasons,” Delany said about these additional meetings.
The program is only four years old and the athletes feel that they were just beginning to show what they could do. The team works hard and has been having the most successful season of the team’s history.
The team does not know what they will do now that their program is gone, the team is uncertain of what they will do now. At the moment, the team is continuing to practice.
Delany said, “We’re still having captain’s practices because we all love to run. They might take away the competition but they’ll never take away the running.”
The team is hoping to bring up its plight at the next Chancellor’s Round Table meeting and hopes that there may be a chance to bring the program back.
Wettig said that there were no plans to bring the program back in the future but she also said, “I honestly can’t answer that because I can’t predict the future.”
Wettig’s final thoughts were that the Athletic Department was regretful of the decision that had to be made but made the point that it was because the department felt that it could not support the team in the competitive way that they wanted to.
