Months after cutting its men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs, Cal Poly is adding a new varsity sport.
In a letter sent to the community, outgoing athletic director Don Oberhelman said the school is elevating STUNT from a club to a varsity sport beginning in the 2025-26 academic year.
STUNT is a female sport that incorporates skills derived from cheerleading.
“One of our guiding principles for Cal Poly Athletics is participating in sports where we can be competitive,” Oberhelman said in the letter. “Two years ago, Cal Poly STUNT won a club national championship and has seen tremendous success since its inception.”
The decision comes on the heels of the controversial decision in March to cut swimming and diving for both men and women.
After announcing plans to cut the swimming and diving programs, the university gave athletes and other supporters a chance to save the programs by raising $25 million by the middle of June.
The number was eventually dropped to $15 million, but the university pulled the plug on the programs after $9 million was raised.
Oberhelman in July told the Mustang News that non-revenue Olympic sports are going to suffer greatly in the wake of the House v. NCAA settlement, echoing a sentiment expressed by athletic directors around the country. He said eliminating swimming wasn’t easy, but financially necessary for the athletic department.
“It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as an athletic director,” Oberhelman said of cutting the swimming and diving programs. “But I 100% believe it was the right decision for our university, and we did not go into it lightly.”
There were 29 swimmers on both the men’s and women’s swimming rosters this past season. The program had a reported $120,000 of funding. The men’s program finished third out of five teams at February’s Big West Championships, while the women’s team was last out of six teams.
Further explaining the decision to transition STUNT to a varsity sport, Oberhelman said the sport has been “managed by the athletic department since 2010, so this addition will not add significant management nor personnel needs.”
He added that the sport will create 65 roster sports for female student-athletes.
In addition, Oberhelman said the school is exploring adding women’s flag football as a varsity sport in the near future.
Oberhelman announced he is retiring as AD in June, but will stay on until the fall or his replacement is named.
To rub some salt in the wound, today I walked by the Anderson pool (which the swim team used) and see the football team has taken it over, going off the diving boards, hanging out in the pool, for at least 2 hours this afternoon. The president and AD blamed the cost of running the pool and maintenance on the swim team, so I hope that they add that cost to the football team’s already massive budget.
Swimming= your time is your time, not subjective.
Stunt= 100% subjective and political.
Most people have zero clue how expensive it is to run and maintain a pool. It really shows in the comments. Adding Stunt and women’s flag football will resolve any future title IX issues and cost less.
As a former swimmer, I hate this idea, but as a realist…it makes sense.
They’re not going to stop using the pool.
We have a club swim team as well as mens and womens club water polo teams that use that pool almost daily. Not to mention random classes that use the pool as well.
The cost of pool maintenance will stay the same whether there is a varsity swim team or not.
100% accurate. Cost to have the pool does not change. Especially with it being a fairy new pool.
Cost to have the pool doesn’t change, but it may be pushed to a different bucket. There is also an opportunity costs if pools could be rented out for other purposes.
I don’t know the situation at Cal Poly, but most pools around the country aren’t owned by the athletics departments. There are exceptions (LSU, for example), but most are owned by a rec sports department.
I believe the pool at Poly actually does fall under the athletic department. The neighboring fitness center that is owned by the rec department (and funded from student rec fees) has additional pool facilities including another 50 meter pool. The competition pool was only used by the swim/dive teams at the time, so it suddenly becomes an “additional” pool the University must maintain. Considering they completely built that competition pool from the ground up a bit over a decade ago, it’s a tremendous waste.
Interesting. I’ll poke around and see if I can figure out who owns it.
The President and AD knew LONG before cutting swim & dive that they were going to add Stunt and Flag Football, yet never once bothered to mention that and kept it a secret until after cutting the team. Had they been HONEST and told the swim & dive team at the start of the year the money could’ve been raised to save the program in time and still be able to add the 2 new sports. Instead they chose to LIE and say it was budget issues and House vs NCAA issues. This was planned by the AD for a good 2-3 years because he was still mad that a bad coach was forced out (Phil) 3 years ago so… Read more »
Since when has Cal Poly ever been competitive in football? Basketball for that matter too. Don O., you are a joke!
Swammer’s Mom, you are spot on!
“USA Cheer created STUNT as an opportunity for colleges, universities and high schools to meet the strict Title IX requirements of a sport. With more than 500,000 high school cheerleaders, STUNT expands participation opportunities for young women by providing an avenue for female athletes to use their cheerleading background in a new format.” from: https://usacheer.org/stunt/stuntthesport
Created “just” to fill in Title IX needs…..hmmmm
That AD is a creep
The ultimate irony: this move *is* a stunt.
Exactly it is a stunt. Swimming raised $9m and they have an established winning program. This makes ZERO sense.