William & Mary Alumni Launch Website, Kicks Off Fundraising Efforts

Braden Keith
by Braden Keith 42

September 07th, 2020 News

The group that is organizing to attempt to save the William & Mary swimming program has launched a website and begun soliciting donations in an attempt to save their swimming & diving program.

According to program alumnus Jaimie Miller, who is among those taking a leadership roll in the group’s effort, the goal is to raise about $4.5 million.

Those donations, along with an existing $3 million endowment, would fully cover the annual operating cost for the program, the group estimates.

The existing endowment, which was established after the school began talking about cutting the program during the 1990-1991 season, was set up when a group of non-swimming William & Mary donors agreed to match donations made by those directly interested in the swimming program.

Miller says that while some small portions of that endowment will be returned to donors or sent to certain academic departments once the swim team is cut, the majority of it will go into the general athletics fund, which athletics director Samantha Huge would have discretion over.

As Miller breaks things down, William & Mary’s program (men and women combined) has about $450,000 in operating costs. That includes coaches’ salaries and benefits and travel; the team doesn’t offer athletics scholarships. While the pool that the team trains out of is owned by the rec sports department, Miller says that rec sports is not charging athletics for its use.

At present, the team is drawing about $118,000 from the endowment annually – which at about 3.9% of its total value is less than its average return, which means the principle of the endowment remains in-tact.

The school is also receiving another $150,000-per-year in donations (as high as $192,000 last year).

Based on those numbers, the school’s annual burden is about $180,000 for the cost of running both the men’s and women’s swimming & diving team.

Miller believes that with $4.5 million in donations, which they are soliciting both from the swimming community as well as a network of potential donors within the broader William & Mary network, the school would not be able to use the cost burden of the program as justification for cutting it anymore.

There is a matter of a strain on facilities like weight rooms with the number of programs being supported by a relatively-small Division I school, but with a $57 million renovation announced earlier this year to Kaplan Arena, which is to include a new Sports Performance Center, Miller thinks that problem is temporary, at best.

She believes that Samantha Huge, William & Mary’s athletics director, has a vision of the school’s athletics program that would see it built into a traditional football and basketball powerhouse, but Miller says that this is a misunderstanding of the school’s culture.

“There is no ‘football Saturdays’ here,” Miller said. “Students don’t come to William & Mary for the powerhouse football program.”

With almost $31,000 in pledges recorded on the website on the first day, the Tribe’s effort has begun, though it is still a long road to their goal.

Besides the fundraising, the site also serves as a poignant memorial for what the alumni are fighting for: the history of the program.

Pool

  • 9-time CAA Championship team
  • 4 NCAA Championship participants
  • 3 NCAA All-Americans
  • 53 AIAW All-Americans
  • 13 Olympic Trials Qualifiers
  • 17 members of W&M Athletics Hall of Fame
  • 121 Individual Event CAA Champions
  • 64 CAA Championship Relays
  • 9 CAA Swimmers of the Meet
  • 6 CAA Swimmers of the Year
  • 9 CAA Rookies of the Meet
  • 11 CAA Coaches of the Year

Classroom

  • 62-time Scholar All-American team (including last 17 consecutive semesters for men and last 22 for women)
  • 1 Rhodes Scholar
  • 10 Phi Beta Kappa inductees
  • Team GPA Fall 2019: 3.39 Men, 3.34 Women
  • 2 all-sports CAA Scholar-Athletes of the Year
  • 20 team members earned Provost Award in 2020 for Cumulative GPA over 3.50

Community

  • Wally Riley Memorial Cancer Swim is now in its 44th year of existence.
  • The team continues to volunteer its time every year for the annual Kiwanis Shrimp Feast, amassing about 180 hours of service in one weekend.
  • Team members have been active in the Williamsburg Special Olympics and in reading in local elementary schools.
  • Several team members have held important leadership positions in Camp Kesem at W&M. Camp Kesem is a unique experience designed for children whose lives have been affected by a parent’s cancer provided at no cost to the children or their family.

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James E. Callahan, (O) 843-235-0137; (CF) 325-5676
3 years ago

This is great news for the Mens’ and Womens’ Swimming Programs at our Outstanding University; it is also very beneficial for all concerned someone took the time to release the Financial figures for the Swimming and Diving Program so everyone knows the Nature of the major and problem. While we are at it we should approach Director of Athletics, Samantha Huge and some major donors to raise extra funds to have an Olympic Size Pool with a Diving Well installed in the new $45 Mil. Athletic and Sports Excellence Performance Center.
Please Count me in for a donation as a former member of our Exceptional Mens’ and Womens’ Championship Track and Country Teams. I will make every effort to… Read more »

STEVE MITCHELL
3 years ago

The new president and athletic director grossly over-estimate alumni desire for big time football and basketball programs at W&M. The school’s athletic heyday was about 100 years ago at this point. We are not like Duke, Stanford or any other well financed school. Our football team plays one game a year against a national power just to get a fat paycheck for showing up. Don’t get me started on how stupid our “new direction” is. we need to let President Rowe know how we feel about this. She bought a bill of goods from AD Huge and we can’t pay the bill.

Geep Howell
3 years ago

Samantha Huge, from all I have read, and comments here, needs to head out of Williamsburg. If, in fact, they do move the endowment to the general fund, I will ask for the return of my donation plus interest.

Bryan
3 years ago

I certainly hope they hit their goal. I have shared this story on facebook and asked my contacts to share it as well.

Captain Ahab
3 years ago

This is my last post on this topic. Considering the miss management of William and Mary by Samantha Huge, I am curious about gaps in her history, such as 1992 to 1994, and 1997 to 2000, as well as if the method by which she gained employment was simply by who she knew and/or by quota, additionally, why does she only stay at places of employment extremely short periods of time, and what happens causing her to leave? Does she have the character, ability, and experience to stand against corruption or is she part of the corruption? What did she do during the Larry Nassar scandal? Take the money and run?

Captain Ahab
Reply to  Captain Ahab
3 years ago

Maybe this is my last post for this topic, stepping back and looking at the big picture, I now see Samantha Huge is a wingman at a bar on a Friday night. She is going to block so her buddy can score. By scoring I mean she will cut all the programs that in anyway compete for attention against football, basketball, and baseball bringing in, Huge, and I mean really Huge, money from sponsors and television sports networks. So William and Mary are not concerned about balance and well rounded education with availability of experiences and participation for everyone. William and Mary only care about big sports and broadcasting money. So much for liberal arts. By the way, watch out… Read more »

Done Before
3 years ago

Can anyone give some insight into how successful these have been over the years in terms of actually saving the program?

Last article I saw on ECU was 440k raised?

Also, does anyone know who was the primary in recrhiting all the foreigners for ECU and where they ended up? Valuable coach just for that…..

FCoach
3 years ago

I had a conversation long ago with a head coach of a successful NCAA champion swim program, he told me that if you want to deter athletic departments from cutting your program, you had better get out in front and start doing some serious fundraising BEFORE you get in their crosshairs, it’s much more difficult politically for them to make cuts when you’re doing things to help financially sustain the program. Years later, I keep seeing programs getting cut, THEN I see the big efforts to starting a “save the team” initiative. His words turned out to be spot on…

Coach
Reply to  FCoach
3 years ago

Did you read the article? Lack of fundraising is not the issue here.

$3 million endowment + consistently bringing in $150k or more a year. Let’s give coaches past and current (as well and alumni and boosters) some credit here.

Last edited 3 years ago by Coach
FCoach
Reply to  Coach
3 years ago

And yet, here we are, fundraising…

Blackflag82
3 years ago

To me this situation is a clear example of how we need to start shifting the conversation away from D1 swimming and how we can strengthen D2 and D3 programs. D1 is going to suffer far more during the next few years than 2 and 3. At least in D2 & D3 nearly all (if not all) the sports are non-revenue, so sports like swimming can, in theory, have a stronger foothold when it comes to talks of endowments and things. There’s no reason those programs can’t be built up to create swimmers on par with D1 if the schools can begin recruiting solid coaches.

Coach
Reply to  Blackflag82
3 years ago

D2 and D3 schools might be less likely to scuttle programs, due to negative impacts on enrollment. However, D2, D3 and NAIA also contain a lot of smaller schools, many private, which are more likely to completely fold within the next decade or so, due to economic forces and shifting trends in higher education, which have been accelerated by the pandemic. We can attempt to save swim programs, but not whole universities.

Blackflag82
Reply to  Coach
3 years ago

Definitely true about the smaller schools and potential closings and I think that should be a consideration in anyone’s choice. But when we talk about public D2, those largely aren’t closing. The same forces that close those smaller schools are likely to continue to knock off smaller D1 swim programs as well. I agree, we can’t save whole universities, but, imo, talking about saving swim programs is too narrow. We need to instead be talking about how to develop a new ecosystem that allows success at a variety of levels. The old model is drastically weakening as a result of the football bubble, and if non-revenue sports like swimming continue to rely on institutions that rely on football, it’s only… Read more »

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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