“I really feel like they’ve just given up on us from the start.”
Last week, Jordan Tholl was a second-year wrestler with the University of Regina – until the program was kyboshed – now he’s searching for answers.
“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you, personally I think it’s the funding,” Tholl said.
A confidential recording of the meeting between the U of R women’s wrestling team and the school’s Kinesiology and Health Sciences Dean Harold Riemer revealed Tholl was spot on.
“We tell the athletic administration, this is how much we need you to raise,” Riemer can be heard explaining to the women. “That target is rough, in 2016-17 that target was $580,000, and they came in short; roughly $220,000 short.”
The athletes feel they’re being punished because staff missed the fundraising goal; which could have covered the cost of the wrestling program.
The money Riemer was referring to were expenditure costs for things like tournaments, travel, jerseys, catch-all costs that weren’t associated with any particular program.
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Overall, athletic finances were ever direr.
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“In 2016-17 fiscal year, athletic salaries was about $1.9 milllion. The straight costs of running basic programs, not including scholarships in this or championship travel, was about $1.2 million. If you do the math, that’s about $3.1 million. The maximum available that’s coming in to support athletics is $2.7 million. That’s a $400,000 deficit, minimum.”
But even that understates the gravity of the situation.
Of the $2.7 million supporting athletics, $2.3 million comes from the Recreation and Athletics Fee; a fund that must be split between the University’s teams, and other recreation programs they offer.
Athletic teams only contributed about $445,000 through gate revenue, sponsorships, and Sask Sport Inc.
The result is a failing system.
“The report, the review was even very clear. You can’t continue to do this. Doesn’t work that way. They made a very clear recommendation, you have to effectively stop doing some things,” Riemer explained.
“The money coming in to support athletics is not nearly covering the cost of athletics,” he continued.
While that money may not be enough, it hasn’t deterred the athletes from looking elsewhere to save their sport.
“I’m sure there’s lots of ways… if we got all the Cougars athletes out and all the Rams athletes out there’s lots of ways we could fundraise and support each other’s teams, and I don’t think that’s looked into hard enough, and that’s partly on their job. That’s not the job of the student athletes to do that,” Jordan Tholl, a second year wrestler countered.
Already, the alumni have rallied around them.
Inga Hammer wrestled with the U of R from 2006-2010 and is also helping lead the charge to raise funds for the program.
“We’re working on drafting a petition to the University, and we’re working on creating an alumni association through the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, but unfortunately, it takes time,” Hammer said.
“The support has always been there, the alumni is there, we just weren’t given a direction to put funds into the team; we weren’t told that that was something that was needed,” she continued.
The athletes created a fundraising proposal for the University, but were turned down.
“We said, “what if we fundraise $100,000 this year, and $50,000 for the next five years?” they came back to us and said that was soft-money and there is no guarantee that even if we had fundraising agreements on that, that we would get that money again.”
Although the university is still looking for ways to up the amount of fundraising dollars they bring in, they’re leery of relying on that model of funding.
Drastic meant cutting the wrestling program and men’s volleyball teams.
“You begin to go through the process of evaluating all the different programs, and you end up ranking them, and somebody ends up at the bottom of the pot. It’s unfortunate that you have to do something like that, and it doesn’t make it any happier, but at the end of the day, I’m responsible for this budget,” Riemer explained.
In private meetings with the wrestling and volleyball teams, Reimer explained that the wrestling team was cut because it ranked last in the school in terms of fundraising, academic performance, and community involvement.
“The way things actually happened wasn’t nearly the way we intended it to happen, but that doesn’t change the fact that that is the way it happened, and we are certainly sorry about that,” Riemer concluded.
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