Baseball, men’s soccer discontinued
Matthew Hazlett/ The Towerlight
At 11:30 a.m. Friday, freshman goalkeeper Felix Petermann found out the men’s soccer and baseball programs were being cut. Not through an official notice, but via Facebook.
“One of my teammates posted something like ‘RIP men’s soccer’ and then I checked my email and saw it,” he said.
Petermann said he was surprised to hear the news because President Maravene Loeschke had been deliberating the decision for so long — since October, after receiving a recommendation from Director of Athletics Mike Waddell. She had originally said she would make the final decision around mid-November.
“If they wanted to cut it, they could have done it two months ago,” he said. “It actually pisses me off because you are waiting for so long and you still have hope.”
Junior left fielder Dominic Fratantuono said he was in class with teammates pitcher Chris Acker and center fielder Brandon Gonnella when they got a text message informing them of a mandatory meeting in the Minnegan Room.
“We all knew what the meeting was about,” Fratantuono said.
Matthew Hazlett/ The Towerlight
Fratantuono said when he arrived, upwards of 20 officers escorted the baseball team to the Minnegan Room where Loeschke informed them of the cuts. The men’s soccer team was not present.
“The President didn’t even wait for the whole [baseball] team to be there,” he said.
Earlier that morning, Mike Gottlieb, Head Coach of Towson baseball since 1989, and Frank Olszewski, Head Coach of men’s soccer since 1982, met with Waddell where they were informed their programs were cut.
“She met with the kids for two minutes, and for whatever reason didn’t want to talk with me or Frank Olszewski,” Gottlieb said.
The discontinuation of the two teams, and the reinstatement of a men’s tennis team would, as Waddell said in his original recommendation, create a brighter fiscal future for the athletics department. It would also put Towson in compliance with Title IX, which is meant to ensure women have equal athletic opportunities on college campuses. The department could also maintain “competiveness,” which refers to funneling resources, such as scholarships, into the remaining sports.
Matthew Hazlett/ The Towerlight
“I respect the President’s final decision to reinstate the men’s tennis team and discontinue men’s baseball and soccer,” Waddell said. “It’s a decision that is heartbreaking on many levels, and our thoughts are with the young people who play right now at Towson and the people who have worn those uniforms in the past for both of those programs.”
Though members of the baseball team said Loeschke only gave a short speech, she said in a conference call with other reporters Friday morning that she ended with a question and answer period.
“I ended by telling them that I was very sorry for the fact that they had to experience this difficult time. And I also told them that though they may not feel like it right now, the university, everyone of us at the University, is here for them 24-7, to help them with their transition,” she said in the conference call, which was 15 minutes after a mass email had been sent to the rest of campus alerting them of the final decision.
Gottlieb said that between the time that the Athletics Task Force voted in favor of Waddell’s recommendations and Friday morning, he hadn’t heard any official updates from the president, or the Athletics department.
“I’m disappointed in the way it played out,” he said. “I just hope they did their best to make it happen. I don’t know that. No one kept me abreast as to what was going on. I wish the communication level was better. I wish I knew the details.”
The school has kept relatively quiet about the proceedings.
Loeschke’s task force, commissioned in October to review Waddell’s proposal, has declined to comment since it made the decision to confirm the original recommendations in November.
The task force mulled over 13 options, including the elimination of either soccer or baseball and roster redistribution, according to the most recent report released by Loeschke. They also accepted proposals from outside sources, including one member of the baseball team, Zach Fisher.
The school has acknowledged a miscalculation released in an earlier report, which did not accurately count the roster sizes of the indoor and outdoor track teams.
The mistake skewed the department’s calculations related to Title IX—accounting for fewer women athletes.
Universities can comply with Title IX in three ways: officials can make the proportions of female athletes equal to the percentage of women on campus, create new women’s sports teams, or prove that female athletes are being offered opportunities on campus. Towson, for the past several years, has tried to increase the number of women’s sports available, which Waddell has said is no longer financially viable.
A current Towson athletics budget could not be accessed by the time of publication, but the Baltimore Sun reported that under Waddell, the athletics budget has increased 2.5 million over the course of two years, with more than 60 percent going to salary increases and new positions.
Almost $900,000 will be saved by cutting the two sports, according to Waddell’s original recommendation.
Petermann said he made the decision to leave Towson at the end of January, when Loeschke last said she would make a final decision. He said that as an international student, he relied heavily on the scholarship and that he came to Towson with the promise of a raise, but that he really just wanted to play soccer.
Loeschke has said the University will honor all current athletic scholarships until the athletes graduate.
“It was one of the reasons I came to America, to get an education and sports. If I can’t have it anymore here, I definitely want to go somewhere else,” he said.
For the baseball players, however, it’s too late to transfer. They’ll have to wait until the end of the season to try and play ball elsewhere.
“We’re not much of tennis players so we’re going to be transferring,” Fratantuono said. “It’s too early to tell, but I’d say about 75 percent of us are transferring.”
Danielle Frater/ The Towerlight
– Jeremy Bauer-Wolf contributed to this article.
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
It’s difficult for lacrosse playing schools who also sponsor football and of course, basketball, to comply with Title IX and meet budget and competitive goals for all of their men’s sports. But it’s past time to recognize that the ‘holy grail’ of men’s lacrosse is a joke at Towson and needed to be the Spring sport eliminated, not baseball. Towson leadership simply didn’t have the stones or brains to get it done (a real shame).
Did you know that Towson Mens Lax holds the distinction of being the ONLY team in NCAA history to have appeared in a D1 champiomship game one year (a long time ago) and then also lose to a first year in existence program — High Point — like they did this year? And will they ever beat Loyola, Maryland, Hopkins ever again, ever?
Baseball, meanwhile, operating on a razor thin budget, was in a wonderful position to capitalize on the recent move by the state flagship school– U of Md’s move to the Big 10. Looking at the state of Maryland’s landscape for baseball, here are the D1 choices now available for the rich high school talent base which resides within the borders of our state:
UMBC… the southernmost school in the America East Conference, and a weak program for the last two decades!
Mt St Mary’s…the southernmost school in the NEC, a lowly conference and also a traditional weakling in D1.
Navy… southernmost team in the Patriot League and a 5 yr committment, and a lowly annual RPI 250 and down the last several years)
Coppin State & UMES bottomfeeders in the weakest D1 conferences in the country FOREVER, from these traditional black colleges.
U of Md… the southernmost team in the Big 10, where they will freeze their evr loving butts off playing at Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa- brrr!!
So with Towson now out of the picture, the prospects for high school from within the for state baseball players at the college level is beyond bleak — with a case of frostbite as their special bonus for signing on in within the Free State.
College baseball at Towson COULD HAVE BEEN a POWERHOUSE in the respectable CAA if the powers that be had any clue at all. With an incremental increase of a stepped up investment in scholarships brought about by dropping mens lacrosse (finally giving the Tigers the power to compete with the full complement of 11.7 scholarships), the local state talent could have bee a juggernaught for years to come. This could have been funded by dismantling mens lax, and instead of being a mediocre ‘me too’, following the lemmings who saturate the Spring with lax, lax, lax, Towson missed on a golden opportunity to leverage the opportunity to propel Towson onto the national stage as a potential perrenial national top 50-75 baseball program.
With the recent resurgence of the two major mens programs, this could have been Towson’s finest hour. Instead, we must endure losses to teams such as Marist and High Point in a faux local signature sport where Towson is destined to be the Maryland state mens lax cellar-dweller for years to come.
I acknowlwdge that times are tough, but if Towson wanted the best opportunity to make the big splash in the athletic arena — that opportunity, now lost, was to ramp up baseball and take advantage of the rich baseball talent within our borders.
This is absolutely insane. I get that you have to get within Title IX but by getting rid of baseball and soccer programs and reinstate….tennis? Nobody cares about tennis. This is an outrage and I graduated from Towson 2 years ago and am an alum. I wish I never went there now.
P.S. does anybody know if they are protesting this or any parents or students picketing outside of the President’s office? Just curious.
The Athletics Task Force refuses to comment on it, but previous articles have demonstrated that Towson would be Title IX compliant through minor cuts in both sports and maybe cutting a few non-scholarship spots in a women’s sport.
The real issue is that Waddell is a terrible fiscal manager, and he’s driven the department into crushing debt.
I strongly disagree with the President’s decision.
In the Towerlight article, there is a mistake.
Below is inaccurate reporting.
‘Almost $900,000 will be saved by cutting the two sports, according to Waddell’s original recommendation.’
The original recommendation states -
‘ INCREASED COMPETITIVENESS: These changes will contribute to a long-term plan to raise the overall competitiveness of the majority of Intercollegiate Athletics Teams at Towson. This will be accomplished by:
o Increasing coaching staff for key programs (add Women’s Cross Country/Track & Field, add Women’s Swimming and Diving, make women’s tennis coach a full-time employee)
o Supplementing recruiting budgets along with the increased scholarship levels for sports
o Addition of funds to the general operating budgets of teams which will provide an enhanced Division I student-athlete experience. ‘.
Particularly upsetting is the phrase – “Supplementing recruiting budgets ”
In other words, the money that in the past (for decades) has provided for Mens Soccer and Baseball, will now be used for recruiting! Ridiculous!
The Presidents statement on Friday states -
Athletic Expenses (in thousands)
FY 13 18,270
FY 14 18,775
FY 15 19,281
FY 16 19,802
FY 17 20,497
FY 18 21,217
The AD does not plan to ‘save’ anything. The funds will be used (mostly) for football. The Budget is projected to increase every year for the next 5 years. There is no plan for any savings – none. The money will be spent on different things; no money will be saved.
Thank you,
Phil Morrison
FYI
President Loeschke cuts football at Mansfield U:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/02/09/loeschke
President Loeschke receives “no-confidence” vote at MU:
http://www.sungazette.com/page/content.detail/id/557428/MU-faculty-expresses–no-confidence–in-president–provost.html?nav=5014
There have been past issues with transparency
(Sorry if this posted twice, I couldn’t figure it out)
I am disappointed in the President’s decision. If I were the Schuerholz family I would ask for all of my money back on the field that is in his name. One of the few things actually named on this campus. Towson had a much better chance of being competitive in baseball than in lacrosse. Our lacrosse program here is a pipe dream, surrounded by much better programs, and in existence only because of the roots the game has in the state. I understand that the Athletics department is trying to create more competitive sports, namely football, and I am all for that. In fact, I absolutely hope this makes football more competitive because along with basketball, the advertising a school gains from being competitive in these programs is worth millions. However, I believe this decision was ill informed, and while other options were explored, I would be surprised if anybody who was assigned to look into this actually fought to keep baseball.
This would not be as hard to swallow if the money actually went to the other sports. The millions of wasted dollars have gone to consultants (friends of Waddell), iPads, coaches, signs, and general fluff. The teams are not seeing anything. It seems like a whole lot of cronyism. Fire Waddell and everything will get better!
Athletics fees better not increase one cent!!!
If you read the article by Keith Mills today on WBAL, it is a telling description of the lack of respect that the current president and AD have for their students and coaches.
http://www.wbal.com/article/98199/3/template-story/A-Black-Eye-For-Towson-University-Its-Athletic-Program-
Armed escorts? Less than an hours notice to get students to a meeting? Coaches not allowed in the meeting? This is not the Towson U that I have known for many years. This is not how you treat coaches who have given their entire professional lives to TU and have worked with hundreds of student athletes. I, like Keith, am ashamed to call Towson my alma mater.
Unpopular decisions are often released at the end of a week on Friday’s in an attempt to minimize impact, termed “dumping the trash” in the media. This term certainly shouldn’t be applied to the Men’s Soccer and Baseball teams who hold the highest GPA’s in Men’s sports at Towson (with the exception of men’s golf with a 9 player roster). That these two sports only represented a paltry 3% of the total athletic budget, after a two year 2.5 million dollar increase in spending by the athletic dept. makes the decision all the more outrageous. Everybody now knows the Title IX excuse was a TOTAL LIE. AD Waddell is the real piece of trash, a term which can now be tagged to Loeschke. Loeschke’s long-term legacy in only her first year is killing two hallmark Towson programs. Loeschke can take solace in the fact that she’s permanently tarnished her reputation and credibility at her alma mater. Rest assured the donor list and future enrollments will be affected more than assumed, that’s a promise….
Hearing all the talk on the radio made me come to find the article in the Towerlight. I am a Towson alumni and a member of the community. I wanted to share an opinion with the campus community about the type of man Mike Waddell is in the community. My son plays AAU basketball in the same program as Mike’s son. I don’t see him all the time, but I have been around he and his family enough over the last year to know that this man is even worse than he is made out in these articles. Within the program he is know for stepping over his boundaries, and making promises that he can not keep. He has even make promises of jobs and other Towson related opportunities for playing time and better team placement. It seems that Mike Waddell feels he is better and smarter than everyone else. People should know that this is not just a business decision. Mike Waddell is not a nice man is manipulates and lies in every situation. We can only hope as a college and a community that Mike Waddell is run out of town quickly.
As a 1994 graduate (PSYC) and husband of a ’94 (EDUC) graduate, I cannot think of a darker time in my respect for TU. I lived with Lance Johnson and Mark Sullivan (soccer) for 1 year in the Towers. What President Loeschke and AD Waddell forgot is that TU is larger than their egos and collective ineptness. If they were truly leaders, they would have recognized that there are many ways to lead. I understand that they had a “task force” of sorts and I am certain they gave appropriate consideration to all factors; however it appears that the manner in which they delivered this decision is appalling. Both coaches were active and dedicated when my wife and I attended. Many of the athletes are still friends. Towson was a place of history and richness….a gem! They have lost my respect; they have lost my support, lost my annual donations and my devotion. I will be glad to return my 1994 Outstanding Man of the Year Award because it once represented a great honor bestowed upon a student, from a school of greatness. No more!
The article failed to specify that the projected savings of $900,000 is by the end of the fiscal year in 2018. (See Athletics Task Force FAQ question 9). $900,000 is POCKET CHANGE for a university as big as Towson. Average yearly tuition for an out of state student living on campus is $15,000.
Now I’m no mathematician…But 2018 is 5 years from now. $15,000 times 5 is $75,000. $900,000 divided by $75,000 is 12. TWELVE. That means only 12 more out of state students would have to pay tuition from now until 2018 to save the same amount of money.
President Loeschke has made a blunder here…
P.S. I’m and art history major and I figured this out. Imagine what a real numbers guy could do for her administration.
Loeschke and Waddell are having an affair! Also I heard Waddell isn’t allowed within 500 yards of an elementary school or chuckie cheese. And he’s a lying fat sack of shit who beats his wife, plain and simple.
Mike Waddell will skip town within 6 months. There’s been serious rumors going around he’s already in the process of interviewing elsewhere. President Loeschke is an oblivious, geriatric “yes mam” who has zero idea about sports and budgeting. There’s a good reason she was unanimously impeached from her job at a tiny Pennsylvania school. Both of these idiots are incompetent and strictly have their self interest and personal agendas as priorities.
They made a bad decision.Treated everyone involved with no respect. Now she hides from the media. Coward.great example of a leader.
time to step down
All the bad and nasty things you are hearing bout Mike Waddle are 100% TRUE. He is a self centered ego maniac. He likes to fire people (at Towson and previous jobs) to show how tough he is. He has been reported to HR for at least a dozen violations. He is a bully, who often makes anti-gay remarks, and has tried to have inappropriate relations with more than one staff member at Towson (women). He has brought his friends in as consultants, and has spent well more money than has been budgeted. Now, we hear he may be taking kickbacks from companies involved with Towson. WOW, how did Towson allow this to happen.
This is just typical of administrators who spend their whole lives trapped in the ‘ivory tower” of a University. I fully support and respect the students and coaches of the soccer and baseball teams, but I can not say the same for the University President and Athletic Director. This is a sad time for Towson.
I’ve been reading this site for the last few days and the level of discourse here is ridiculous. Instead of the outlandish personal attacks the chatter should be about the facts of this situation and how, if at all, there could be a workable alternative to baseball and soccer being disbanded. With every heresay rumour rant posted the main points of this decision are getting lost. That focus should be the future of these sports at Towson and what is going on with these kids and staff members.
Ashamed to be a Towson graduate
Time to Focus:
The decision is made, with no credible explanation. They will not change their mind. An investigation is needed because of the falsified reports released by the administration.
This article is very well written. But as evident in the comment section, there is a lot more to be said. Student/Athlete/Alumnus reaction. Do the numbers really add up? What is the culture inside the athletic department really like? Calls for Loeschke’s firing and her troubled history.
I hope the Towerlight doesn’t drop this and really investigates this fully. We need more reporting like this.
Time to Focus:
During this whole process we have asked for data to support this decision. We were stonewalled at every request. The AD and President did not return calls or requests to meet. When asked for hard numbers none were provided. No meetings were allowed. So when an unfair decision comes down what else can you do but demand an investigation especially when the final Title IX numbers presented do not match the original Title IX numbers the decision was based on.
I am disgraced to be an alumni right now. Seriously, you’re cutting the national pastime???
Really Waddell? You needed to hire a PR firm to answer questions about your fraud. How much did that cost you? Guess there goes the savings from cutting baseball and soccer
$30,000 plus.
We have hit ESPN: http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=9044259
Sorry Towson, you have lost me as a supporter of Towson sports and I extend an apology to student/athletes in Towson’s existing sports programs.
I am huge fan of the Orioles and since Towson no longer considers baseball as a viable sport to compete in I no longer consider Towson worth supporting in football, lacrosse and basketball.
I am further sorry the CAA could not come to Towson’s rescue to save the baseball and soccer teams like the Big 10 came to Maryland’s rescue to save their once deleted sports programs.
I wish all student/athletes the best in your respective sports but you should consider transferring to a more stable institution that won’t knife you in the back like AD the President have done to the baseball and soccer teams.
BTW, Title IX has abolutely nothing to do with this situation. This is only a b.s comver-up to disguise the selfishness of the AD and President to even consider taking a cut in salary to save the teams much like Joe Flacco’s new contract has caused the Ravens to trade their star WR Anquoine Bodin to the 49ers.
I suppose I can now only cheer for Towson from my recliner. I certainly won’t waste my time, fuel and wear and tear on my car to drive 7 hours to support Towson sports with my hard earned money especially with the national ecomony unstable as it is.
Bye Towson.
I guess the John Scherholz baseball complex will become a Towson environmental eyesore with no baseball games, no fans, no consessions and no one to upkeep the grounds.
When will the president show her face and answer questions for the media?
Ground hog day. Show some integrity.As of now the office of the president is a joke. Some would call you a dictator.
It is terrible the way they have treated these players. It’s nice they are honoring the scholarships but it shows they don’t really understand. These people are there to get an education but to also be noticed by MLB scouts.
Giving them no notice, telling them the way they did, needing armed guards, it shows a lack of leadership.
Not talking to anyone, hiding from the media, shows lack of leadership.
She needs to accept responsibility and answer the tough questions. That is teaching true leadership.
It is flat out wrong what was done here. The fact that the administration is silent, a PR firm was hired, and there is zero transparency is only hurting Towson even more. You can kiss all of the progress the AD made in athletics goodbye.
It seems ever since the AD got here, the attitude has been that the ends will justify the means.
He thinks a successful basketball or football program will make up for how this situation was handled. The President could not have acted more unprofessionally. The Towerlight and local media must not let up on this until legitimate answers are given.
Don’t get me wrong, I love TU athletics and nothing makes me happier than to see the football and basketball teams do well. But there is a right way and a wrong way to go about doing things. My guess is there are plenty of programs out there who have built their programs without lying, reckless spending, and disrespecting anybody who gets in the way.
Leave your response!
Year In Review 2012-2013
The Towerlight in Print
Categories
Weather
Archive
Resources
First Class Chauffeured Washington DC Limousine Service
Recent Comments
recent articles
Links
Sections