With bad news abound in collegiate swimming for the last decade, finally some positive news. Beginning in the fall of 2013, Cincinnati will begin working back toward full reinstatement of NCAA-allowed scholarships for three athletics programs: men’s cross country, men’s track & field, and men’s swimming.
Scholarships were cut in 2009, due to fiscal constraints, a year before Josh Schneider became the NCAA Champion in the 50 free. On Tuesday, director of athletics Whit Babcock announced that “UC will implement an aggressive plan to ultimately offer the full NCAA complement of grant-in-aid scholarships to student-athletes in each of its 19 programs.” That’s not an immediate return to full-scholarship status, but tells us that such status will come sooner rather than later.
“To consistently win championships and compete at the level we aspire, we must provide the resources necessary for our coaches to recruit, retain, and graduate our student-athletes who proudly represent the Bearcats,” Babcock said. “We’ve been `fully funded’ in football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, and some other sports for a number of years, but today is a big step in the right direction to afford all of our sports and student-athletes that same opportunity. It’s a critical time in our history and this is significant for our future.”
To fund the effort, UC athletics has launched its “110% campaign” where they will ask all existing donors to give an additional 10% on top of whatever they gave last year. The campaign has also received a huge boost from new football coach Tommy Tuberville, who has committed $300,000 over the next 5 years to support the Olympic sports programs, including swimming.
“The return of athletic scholarships to swimming and diving is monumental beyond just the University of Cincinnati,” swimming and diving head coach Monty Hopkins said. “This will have an enormous impact that will transcend more than one particular program. I applaud our athletic department and university leadership for their vision and the bold steps taken to give us this opportunity.”
Cincinnati noted, when making the announcement, that both swim teams had a GPA of over a 3.0: the women sat at 3.2 and the men at 3.1.
Tommy Tuberville and Bearcat AD Whit Babcock were outstanding supporters of Swimming while they were at Auburn- and with the very likable Josh Schnieder working for the AD I can see why UC would be motivated to set a new bar in NCAA sports! Congrats Bearcat Family!
This is awesome and I applaud the UC administration for understanding that there is more to college athletics then just making a profit. These student-athletes will help represent the University with honor and pride.
Fantastic News!