Less than six years after cutting the program, UMass Dartmouth will bring back its men’s swimming & diving team for the 2026-2027 academic year.
UMass Dartmouth, an NCAA Division III school (not to be confused with the Ivy League’s Dartmouth College), was one of a number of schools to eliminate its swimming and diving programs amid the financial crunch of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the summer of 2020, the school announced the elimination of men’s and women’s swimming & diving, women’s equestrian, men’s golf, men’s lacrosse, sailing, and men’s and women’s tennis. In total, the moves impacted 94 student-athletes and dropped the school from 12 men’s sports and 13 women’s sports to 8 men’s sports and 9 women’s sports.
Less than a year later, the school reinstated the women’s swimming and diving and tennis programs after a review of the athletics program’s overall strategy as it relates to Title IX and the proportionality test.
That left the school with 11 women’s teams and 8 men’s teams.
Because the school sponsors varsity football, though, there were 271 male varsity athletes and 153 female athletes in the 2023-2024 season, according to federal data. That implies only a 36% opportunity rate for women, whereas approximately 51.5% of the student-body is women.
The school simultaneously added varsity programs in men’s lacrosse and women’s flag football. Those programs typically carry about 35 and 25 players, respectively.
Women’s flag football will begin as a club sport in 2026-2027 and build toward varsity competition the following year. The NCAA D3 membership to recognize women’s flag football as an Emerging Sport at the 2026 NCAA Convention.
Current women’s swimming head coach Mike Kroll has been named the men’s swimming head coach.
The school currently lists six athletes on its women’s roster.
The program finished 10th out of 11 teams at the 2026 Little East Championship. The team was led by 43 points from Ky Winer, who placed 5th in the 100 breast (1:12.04) and 200 breast (2:37.96) and 4th in the 200 IM (2:22.60).
The Little East currently has six men’s programs.
UMass Dartmouth previously competed at the New England Swimming and Diving Championships, where in 2020 the women finished 6th out of 21 teams and the men finished 5th out of 14 teams.
In the season before the program was cut, the women’s team listed 15 members, almost all of them local to the region.
UMass Dartmouth is a rare small college that is reporting enrollment growth. The school currently lists 5,731 undergraduates on its website and a total enrollment of 7,968. A public school located in Dartmouth, Massachusetts on the state’s south coast, tuition for Massachusetts residents is about $16,000 per year, for New England residents is about $22,000 per year, and for out of state or international students is about $34,000 per year.
The elephant in the room is the fact that men’s football takes up all the space and it is only one sport. Has any college had the bravery to cut men’s football and add Several sports?
We really like the school. My daughter was recruited but with only 6 girls and 3 were Seniors you can’t even swim a relay.
Yeah, but with a freshman class of just 8 or 9 swimmers, you already have a team that can be competitive in that conference in just one year. A few decent recruiting classes and the team could be pushing 30 swimmers and vying for conference titles by the time she is an upperclassman.
Someone has to be willing to be part of a rebuild, and it’s a good school too.
So to secure the future of men’s swimming at smaller schools, we should all be pushing the adoption of women’s flag football. I’d rather support that than see NCAAs have 14 guys in the 50 free qualify on merit.
UMass Dartmouth is probably just trying to comply with Trup’s upcoming Executive Order that will FIX College Athletics. Smart move!
Thank you Mr President!
the head coach sent me an email asking if i wanted to go… should i?
It’s a great school, and coach Mike is a passionate coach! Yes you should go
coach mike is great!
Be the start of something new! I personally have no connection with the school but who knows they could be the top D3 school within the next decade never know and you could be the one who said “I was apart of the first group of guys who helped contribute to UMass Dartmouth becoming what it is now” or something like that.
They can definitely be vying for conference titles in a very short period of time. They have the nicest pool by a decent amount.
same, lets go together
like the picture of the campus
that’s MY best friend.