Stanford announces 11 varsity sports have been discontinued by the school
The economic impact of the coronavirus has hit Stanford’s athletics programs.
That’s the latest out of northern California as the school announced on Wednesday that 11 varsity sports are being discontinued effective by the conclusion of the 2020-21 academic year.
Stanford had 36 varsity sports programs prior to this news. This decision will affect 240 student-athletes and 22 coaches.
The programs cut by Stanford churned out 20 national championships and 27 Olympic medals during their run at the school.
Here is a portion of the lengthy statement issued by Stanford on Wednesday:
“In consultation with the Board of Trustees, we have made the decision to reduce the breadth of our athletics programs and staffing. Stanford will discontinue 11 of our varsity sports programs at the conclusion of the 2020-21 academic year: men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, co-ed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling. All of these teams will have the opportunity to compete in their upcoming 2020-21 seasons, should the circumstances surrounding COVID-19 allow it, before they are discontinued at the varsity level. Regretfully, 20 of our support staff positions are being eliminated as part of this realignment.”
There goes the Capital One Cup.
That’s a creative use of the word “realignment”. I think “downsizing” is a more accurate euphemism.
There will be less sports to distract from their hard core leftist agenda.
I’m not sure that most of these qualify as “sports.” Do you think they have a protesting team?
They still have one of the top 10 tree-hugging teams, and their bitter co-ed tree-hugging rivalry with Cal-Berkeley remains in place. I think both schools lost out in the Championship to San Jose State, when the two Pac-12 squads hugged trees with poison oak. However, San Jose’s male teammates used Roundup to get rid of the poison oak, and the female teammates all used Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder for better gripping, and now the entire team has cancer, so the real winner was the Sokolov Law Firm and the bug-eyed lady that does the ads on ME-TV all night.
….okay. Apparently the real winner is your meth dealer.
Pretty sure most of these aren’t NCAA-sanctioned. I mean, never heard of any other school sponsoring synchronized swimming or sailing. Crew is a sport, but does the NCAA really draw a distinction between rowing and “lightweight rowing?”
This is really just Stanford entering the modern era and abandoning some of their faux-ivy league pretenses. Cal dropped these same sports a few years ago under the auspices of budget, but I think they were mostly just tired of supporting “sports” of zero interest to anybody but the “athletes” and their parents.