Loyola Marymount College (LMU) introduced will probably be reducing six athletics groups after the conclusion of the 2023-24 season, together with ladies’s swimming.
LMU is situated in western Los Angeles, California and at the moment sponsors 20 sports activities applications. In accordance with a press launch, the transfer seems to be financially motivated as a way to focus sources on the remaining 14 applications.All six reduce applications are Olympic sports activities.
Full Record of Packages Minimize:
- Males’s Rowing
- Males’s Cross Nation
- Males’s Observe and Discipline
- Ladies’s Rowing
- Ladies’s Observe and Discipline
- Ladies’s Swimming
Whereas LMU is a member of the West Coast Convention (WCC), the convention doesn’t sponsor a swimming championship. As an alternative, the ladies’s swimming crew competes within the Pacific Collegiate Swim Convention Championships (PCSC), the place they completed seventh of 15 groups final season. On the conclusion of this season, head coach Bonnie Adair may have accomplished 21 seasons with the Lions. Adair is the primary full-time ladies’s swimming coach at LMU.
There are at the moment 29 athletes on the roster: 9 first-years, 9 sophomores, six juniors, and 5 seniors.
LMU will proceed to honor athletic monetary assist for impacted college students, ought to they select to remain for the rest of their undergraduate profession. The athletic division additionally says it can help college students who select to switch.
Athletic director Craig Pintens additionally addressed the LMU athletics neighborhood immediately in a letter, dated January 23, 2024.
“These modifications additionally mirror the realities of the transformational modifications impacting school athletics nationally. The NCAA panorama is altering quickly, and colleges of all sizes should adapt to supply the very best student-athlete expertise whereas changing into much more aggressive. LMU isn’t any exception,” writes Pintens.
An connected report elaborated additional on this assertion, citing a lot of causes together with the passing of identify, picture, and likeness (NIL) laws and the pattern of convention realignment. The doc explicitly mentions the dissolution of the Pac-12 as being worrisome for the WCC.
Moreover, the report refers back to the new NCAA coverage that eradicated the “volunteer coach” designation, stating that within the wake of this transformation LMU had 26 unfilled assistant coach positions. It’s implied that this created an untenable expense for the college, although that is barely deceptive because the coverage change didn’t require volunteers to be transformed to paid positions.
Pintens closes his letter with the next:
“That is undoubtedly a difficult time for a lot of inside our neighborhood, however I’m assured that that is the very best choice to maneuver LMU Athletics ahead and to supply an impressive expertise worthy of our college students and our college’s ambitions.”
