SwimSwam spoke with Austin Lathrop, Camilo Vargas, and Sofia Vargas, three members of the Cal Poly swimming and diving roster that was suddenly cut by the school’s athletic department on Friday, March 7, effective immediately.
All three swimmers give their thoughts on how this matter was handled by the athletic director, what this team means to them, and how anyone can help in their grassroots effort to reinstate the team.
While the team has a GoFundMe with the stated goal of raising $200,000, SwimSwam has reported that Cal Poly‘s president has stated it would take a $25,000,000 endowment for the team to be brought back.
- 0:00 Podcast Introduction
- 1:50 Fundraising Goals on GoFundMe
- 9:11 Team Getting Cut
- 20:47 Small Wins
- 26:12 Being on Cal Poly Swim & Dive
They’re losing $500k per year on the House settlement supposedly, yet they’re all too eager to throw $45 million at new football facility for a team that hasn’t had a winning season since 2016? The AD is an absolute joke, I’d rather him just straight up say he doesn’t like swimming instead of blatantly lying like that
That’s about right …. $25M is usually the number (Michigan State was around that) for the AD to set, to ensure that the team cannot make the goal. Sadly, once the Michigan State group shockingly made their goal, the AD reneged and refused to reinstate the teams anyway.
Even if self-funded, these AD’s just don’t like swimming.
fantasy wish: USA Swimming would realize this is part of their broader mission and would be “permanently” involved in lobbying for collegiate swimming programs.
No chance! They think everything is fine
Btw, representatives for College swim coaches association were on capital hill the other day testifying about of course supporting non revenue college sports but also the Olympic sports pipeline throughout age group and up.
At least they care, shame the same can’t be said about USA Swimming
Btw, Louisville coach Albiero is the president of the coaches association and was the one who testified. You can find it online if you want to see at least a little bit of passion about our sport
Probably wasn’t Peter Linn, former Eastern Michigan coach. Has never spoken out about EMU cutting the most successful team on campus that he built. I just don’t understand him.
USA swimming only cares about the top clubs/top athletes. They do nothing at all to promote the sport and hype it up in any way. They’re extremely lucky athletes like Phelps and Ledecky have come along in recent years to grab some attention or else they would be dead in the water. Kyle Sockwell has done more on his own to grow the sport in his post collegiate career than USA swimming has done in their entire existence.
That first sentence is so unfortunately true.
Iowa was given the same number, raised the funds and was still told no in 2020.
Cut by Gary “Lawsuit Losses” Barta.