In the wake of criticism over the school’s cutting of seven varsity sports, William & Mary athletic director Samantha Huge is resigning, reports say.
Sportswriters David Teel and Matt Norlander both broke the news via Twitter that Huge will step down from her post, which was later confirmed by a press release from the school.
Sources: William & Mary AD Samantha Huge is resigning in wake of protests over cutting of seven Tribe sports. Announcement soon.
— David Teel (@ByDavidTeel) October 6, 2020
Can confirm David’s report. William & Mary’s AD is stepping down. Also notable because Samantha Huge is currently her conference’s rep (the Colonial) on the Division I Council, which will meet and vote next week on a variety of issues. https://t.co/i9dzO99PJQ
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) October 6, 2020
The school confirmed the news this afternoon. President Katherine A. Rowe says Huge was “asked to lead a difficult change at William & Mary – change required to address long-standing imbalances and put the Athletics Department on sound financial and operational footing for years to come.”
“Now it is clear to me that a new approach is necessary,” writes Rowe, saying she and Huge “mutually agreed that it is best to part ways so the university can focus on the critical questions facing W&M Athletics.”
Jeremy Martin will serve as interim athletic director.
Huge has been under heavy criticism since the College of William & Mary announced in September that it would be cutting seven varsity sports programs. Women’s and men’s swimming & diving are among the programs to be cut. Huge wrote in a letter to the school community that the athletic department could “no longer continue on an unsustainable financial trajectory,” citing long-running financial issues worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.
But Huge admitted that she plagiarized portions of that letter from a Stanford announcement over the summer. (Stanford cut 11 programs including synchronized swimming, but not swimming & diving). Huge says her aim was to “emulate best practices, not imitate,” but took responsibility for copying portions of the Stanford letter in announcing William & Mary’s cuts.
Huge has been at William & Mary since 2017, when she left an associate athletic director job at Texas A&M to take the athletic director position for William & Mary. She has previous associate athletic director stints at Wake Forest and Georgetown.
Huge was the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) representative to the NCAA’s Division I council, but her term was set to expire in October of 2020, per the NCAA’s roster.
A campaign to save William & Mary’s swimming programs has raised over $1.1 million in donations, with a goal of $4.5 million.
A representative of the Save Tribe Swimming campaign gave SwimSwam the following statement:
“The President and BoV have clearly heard the concerns of the community and recognized that a path forward was not a viable option under Samatha’s leadership. We are eager to see the data Jeremy will be sharing later this week and hope it will shed light on some of the answers we all have been searching for over the past month. This announcement is a step in the right direction, however our mission will not be completed until we see the both the men’s and women’s swim teams reinstated.”
Scorched earth policy going well I see
As I’ve said each time an AD has cut a sport, they should resign or be fired because they have failed at their job. They should be an advocate for all sports and figure out how to make it all work.
That William and Mary alumni with money got rid of her. William and Mary did not need to save money by cutting programs their alumni pockets go deep with old and new money.
Hopefully, Gary Barta at the University of Iowa follows suit …. same disgraceful behavior from that athletic director as well. “No amount of fundraising, including fully endowing these programs, will reverse this decision.” Barta did precisely the same thing that Huge did: eliminate several programs, even if there was no cost to the school. How is that justified? What possible reasoning allows an administrator to dismiss a zero-cost team? Of course, there are difficult decisions if the non-revenue teams drag down a budget. But if there is no cost, why toss them??
Perhaps a case could be made if the facility had to be replaced (a large fixed cost) or if the administrative support was expansive (department staff needed, particularly… Read more »
I don’t understand it either, but I think you are right that they just don’t want certain sports. We are supposed to be starting an “open dialogue” with the school this week. The hope is to get some transparency on the decision making, although nothing they have provided yet justifies the swim team being cut. They claim it was for financial reasons but they cut the least expensive sports. Makes no sense to me
“amid protests” wonder if Swimswam had any effect on that…
To think that senior admin wasn’t in the know is naive at worst. Cleared it with them before the annoucement, took the fall while the president and BOT nod.
Hmmmm . Good timing referencing Nixon . It is said Some People did Something in 2016 .
they are referring to the protests from the BOV meeting last week, all the emails that have been sent, and news articles from local news outlets and swimming publications like SwimSwam. so huge effort. savetribeswimming.com/press has all the news articles that have been written
Bet she steals some lines from Nixon for her resignation statement
Ol’ Longhorn is somewhere weeping right now
Let’s quell the anger against her and support W&M. She resigned, as she should have. We don’t need to make the rubble bounce. The cost-efficient, highly productive team should be reinstated. This is an awesome program for W&M.
Nope. I predicted she’d be thrown under the bus, and in the end, the teams would still be cut. We’ll see. She got her marching orders to promote men’s football and basketball from much bigger donors than the swim alumni, and from the BOV and the president. The interim AD is the f’in chief of staff of the president, who had a mediocre career as an assistant basketball all coach over a decade ago. He basically has zero experience running an athletic department and he’ll do whatever the president says, who will do whatever the BOV say, who will do whatever the football/basketball donors say. If they go the “we want all sports for a broad student experience” over the… Read more »
So according to Ol’ Longhorn the recipe for an athletic department in good fiscal health is a football/basketball excellence.
I mean if he truly is a Longhorn, he wouldn’t know the problems of a struggling athletic dept…
Texas is also run by Football
Some truth to that, but the UT swim camp is the most profitable camp at UT. It brings in more than a million dollars every year, which is leaps and bounds higher than any of the other sport camp at UT.
You keeping talking about fiscal health. But cutting a successful swim team that cost $200k per year (And is willing/able to completely self-fund) is not about fiscal health.
It’s also hilarious that the women swimmers’ Title IX lawsuit calls into question the large roster of “benchwarmers” on the women’s rowing team WHEN THE BOV RECTOR IS A FORMER ROWER AND STILL ACTIVE IN OFFICIATING ROWING. Talk about picking the wrong target…
Unless you know something I don’t, WM does not currently have a women’s rowing team, and therefore cannot have a large roster of benchwarmers. Do your research 🙂
Took awhile for senior management to realize they needed to stop the bleeding. Hope they negotiate in good faith with the teams. Good victory Tribe Athletes! Time to finish hard.