Brown University will transition 11 of its 38 varsity teams to the club level while adding two new varsity sports. Swimming was not among those cut.
Brown will move the following sports from the varsity (intercollegiate NCAA) level to competing at the club level:
- Men’s & women’s fencing
- Men’s & women’s golf
- Women’s skiing
- Men’s & women’s squash
- Women’s equestrian
- Men’s track & field, and cross country (which counts as three sports: cross country, indoor track & field, outdoor track & field)
Meanwhile, the school will add two new varsity sports, transitioning its club coed sailing and club women’s sailing programs to the varsity level.
That leaves the school with 29 total sports remaining. Brown still sponsors swimming & diving for men and women. The men were 4th of 8 teams at the 2020 Ivy League Championships and the women were 5th of 8 teams.
The Brown Daily Herald reports that the school will “maintain the current operational budget for athletics,” merely re-allocating the money formerly spent on those programs. The school’s president, Christina Paxson, says the smaller number of varsity teams will “support stronger recruiting in the admissions process, allowing for deeper talent on each team.”
The Providence Journal reports that Brown already had one of the bigger athletic departments in the NCAA, at least in terms of total sports. Only Harvard and Stanford sponsored more varsity teams prior to these cuts, that paper reports.
The cuts should affect about 150 student-athletes and seven coaches. They will go into effect for the 2020-2021 academic year. The Providence Journal reports that the school will have roughly $500,000 to reallocate in its budget.
Brown Track & Field was good in late 1980s/1990s. Not sure what’s happened since, but unusual to see it downgraded to club. Happy to see Men’s and Women’s water polo survive as they’ve done well, but it’s a fairly obscure sport in the Northeast. They’re saying its not a budget move, but to improve recruiting depth in remaining sports. The sports downgraded are mostly prep school/country club sports. Maybe admissions dept and academic depts pushing back on Ivy League practice of admitting so many athletes with materially lower academic performance. Hard to figure this one out, but an ominous trend for swimming and all college sports.
The comments on the RunRan website are gonna be lit.
Agreed, I’m pretty shocked by that one. Side note, the way it’s stated above makes it sound like “track,” “field” and “cross country” are each separate sports.
“Cross-country,” “indoor track & field” and “outdoor track & field” are the three sports.
Coed sailing? Man that’s the toughest training there is. Like navy SEALS!
Not the comment I expected from someone who (presumably) is involved in the Olympic sport of swimming. John Mollicone has built an extremely strong program at Brown, including two Olympians on this year’s team. I both sailed and swam at the college level (albeit DIII for swimming) and can assure you that sailing was just as much of a physical commitment (more at times) and much more of a mental commitment.
I am sure ur sailing dryland was brutal!
The two a days and morning practice left u exhausted!
Is chess practice worse?
Sportshaming is my least favorite sports meme.
This community lost their mind when Tua said that swimming was less physical than football, and we’re going to throw rocks at sailing?
I invite you to watch the Olympic men’s Finn class medal race in Rio and tell me that these guys aren’t working hard:
https://youtu.be/BNk7k0f3tPg?t=327
Braden- missing the point by a spinnaker
My point is swimming is more important and valuable to more people than coed sailing.
Sail away, just not instead of swimming
I guess that point was obscured by a comment that seemed to very directly attack the level of effort that sailors put in, and comparing the physicality to that of chess.
Your point is still pretty ignorant, to be honest.
is it though?
To definitively say that one sport is “more important and valuable” is pretty vague and subjective.
Obviously more people competitively swim compared to sail, but doesn’t mean it’s more important and valuable to any individual.
And the physical requirements of one vs another have nothing to do with their significance in society
Re more valuable – certainly not at Brown, a school that has consistently created Olympic level talent while at the same point had a terrible swim team by Ivy League standards. Sailing is huge culturally in RI whereas there is zero swimming culture.
Brown has had the women’s college sailor of the year the last three years running, including this year with an Olympian from Norway and finished the fall season ranked 6th in coed and first for the women across all programs. When was the last time they even qualified a swimmer for NCAAs?
Sorry, the remark is simply ignorant to those with an understanding of both programs at Brown.
As of 2018 Brown had amassed an endowment of 3.8 billion…
Ain’t Mrs. Brown the lucky one!
Huge, yet smallest in their conference!
Strange move.
Also… how much skiing is done for a ski team in RI?
People forget New England isn’t that big. The mountains aren’t that far a drive from Providence. An hour or two depending on where you go.
Yep, a lot of local high schools also have ski teams. It’s only about a 40 minute drive to the nearest ski slopes
40 minutes? To where? Yahoo with 250ft of vertical that hasn’t opened in 4 years? Even Wachusett or Nashiba are over an hour away. Pretty tough to train regularly during the week.
Does this mean there will no longer be recruits for these sports?