Clemson University has dropped the final ax upon its aquatics program by cutting it’s women’s diving program. That team was its only remaining varsity aquatics program since they dropped men’s and women’s swimming and men’s diving after the 2010-2011 season.
A blanket release was sent out on Tuesday to coaches around the country notifying them of the move and subsequent open season on transfers from Clemson.
The Tigers had 3 signees, who will have their National Letters of Intent declared null-void. In addition, 12 of the team’s 14 divers from this season have NCAA eligibility remaining.
The program struggled to compete in the ACC as one of two diving-only programs in the conference (along with the Miami men), but had positive momentum in 2017. For the first time since dropping swimming that head coach Leslie Hasselbach Adams’ team has had an NCAA zone qualifier in all three events (1m, 3m, platform).
Freshman Freida Lim is going to be the most sought-after transfer after she placed 10th on the platform at the Zone B Championships last week – Clemson’s highest finisher. She also took 2nd at the ACC Championships on the platform.
Danielle Reitsma finished her eligibility this season and placed 5th on the 1-meter at the ACC Championships. The team placed 13th at ACCs with 144 points – only 8 points behind Boston College, who has swimmers but lost their coach mid-season.
With the cut, Clemson, who won last year’s NCAA FBS National Championship in football, is down to 8 men’s and 8 women’s programs. Clemson is adding women’s softball to bring the women’s total back up to 9.
Clemson is adding women’s softball to remain in Title IX compliance. http://newsstand.clemson.edu/mediarelations/clemson-to-add-softball-womens-diving-concludes-final-season/
Clemson (and the rest of the ACC as well) has also gotten a total of about $75 million the last 3 years from TV, bowl game payouts and NCAA tourney basketball money. That’s ab0ut $25 million per year.
Now they have a little more money for football which is all those folks care about anyway.
Bottom line was always that Clemson didn’t want to spend money on a new facility. Clemson was good back in the day. Really good. Mitzi Kremer was an Olympian in 1988 & circa that time Clemson cracked the top 5 at NCAAs for women. The men won the ACC once in the mid 1980s. But Clemson just didn’t have the money in the early 1990s.
That was then, this is now. Clemson has lots of cash flow. Football is running hot & the ACC is a huge revenue men’s basketball conference. They do have other sports doing well…baseball, soccer are two examples.
This to me is the same disappointment as Univ of Maryland. In tough times the non-revenue… Read more »
They are only 20 miles from Greenville, SC, a fairly large city/metro region – If they wanted to they could follow the example of Va Tech and the Town of Blacksburg which built a shared aquatic facility that’s used by both the college and the community.
For years, Coach Leslie Hasselback-Adams has been driving divers on her own time to Georgia Tech (and Greenville) multiple times a week so her divers had access to the 10m platform to train. GT also has a bubbler machine hugely important when attempting new, increasingly technical and difficult dives (air bubbles break the water’s flat surface hence decreases potential for injury when hitting the water ~55mi/hr).
Please do us all a favor and drop every sport other then football and baseball. This way you can stop pretending to give a rats……
Wonder if they’ll ever bring the swim programs back… the pools don’t seem bad and the state of SC does not have that many college swim teams.
Had anyone ever brought a swim team back?
ASU cut their mens program a few years back but through donations, alumni support, boosters etc they came back the following season
Since they are adding softball as a replacement, it is not at all likely that they will ever bring swimming and diving back.
Clemson overall has a sorry athletics program – they have had recent success in football, but their other sports always lag near the bottom of the ACC, and in state, they suffer because U of South Carolina is viewed as the far superior school in academics and student life. Outside of football, even Coastal Carolina, College of Charleston, are viewed as a better choice for athletes in other sports.
As an aside, it’s sad that Clemson cannot spend some of it’s recent football-success money on *bringing back* full swim/dive instead of cutting the last remnant.