State System looks to preserve buzzer-beaters and personal growth as it weighs mergers
The fight to save sports is underway across Pa.'s state-owned universities
Someone on the basketball court left Megan Storck unguarded for a moment with seconds left in the game and everything on the line. Big mistake.
The sophomore guard let loose the most storied shot in California University of Pennsylvania women's basketball history 17 years ago, a 3-point swish that sealed its first NCAA Division II national championship — a pinnacle moment seen by a modest crowd of 2,681 in Missouri but many more on ESPN2.
She would go on to teach high school after graduation. Years later, she told her alma mater what it meant as an undergraduate.
"I wish I could bottle that emotion and open it whenever I want to go back to it," she said.
Bill Schackner
Plan in works to save sports programs at Pa. state universities being merged
Preserving every campus sport, even as six of Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities including Cal U are merged, seems a heavy lift with professors being let go and academic departments under review amid sharp enrollment losses.
But the State System of Higher Education has vowed to do just that. Chancellor Daniel Greenstein and other system leaders have declined so far to describe what it might look like.
"Right now, what's important here is our commitment to pursuing a path with the NCAA that would allow us to maintain the current complement of athletics at each of our campuses," spokesman David Pidgeon said last week.
The State System board of governors meets Wednesday and Thursday, and athletics may come up in a broader discussion of system redesign.
The proposed university mergers involve Cal U, Clarion and Edinboro universities in the west, and Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield in the northeast.
The schools date to the Civil War era, and each has carved its own historical niche. One of them, Mansfield, gave America its first ever night football game, a tilt that ended in a scoreless draw at halftime in 1892.
Precious few of the system's 5,600 student-athletes will play for a national championship, and most put away their jerseys and cleats well short of a pro sports career. But supporters say what really matters are the personal growth opportunities those students get on campus as they prepare for careers in business, science and the arts.
"We understand there is a very small minority of kids who are going to go on and make any kind of living playing sports," said John Gump, longtime women's volleyball coach at Kutztown University and an official with the coaches union. "But it prepares them for what comes next."
It's also an admissions tool.
Prospective biology or English majors who happen to play soccer or field hockey might bypass a school if those sports are in jeopardy. That's trouble for a system whose enrollment of about 95,000 students is down by 22% since 2010, and by nearly 50% on some campuses.
Every so often, athletes do turn their passion into a career.
Years before he achieved Olympic gold in wrestling in 1996, Kurt Angle hit the mats for Clarion University. Pete Vuckovich played baseball there in the early '70s, before becoming a Cy Young-winning pitcher for Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Brewers.
Trevor Harris, quarterback of the Edmonton Football Team of the Canadian Football League, is an Edinboro University graduate.
On March 27, 2004, Ms. Storck and her teammates faced their ultimate test, trailing with under 29 seconds left in the national championship against Drury University. She hit her shot, and later was knocked to the floor after catching a rebound that helped put the game out of reach.
Ms. Storck went on to teach in the Conneaut area and also coached girl's basketball. She could not be reached for this story.
Nothing about mergers is easy. For months, an athletics group has pored over data and reviewed scenarios to see if and how keeping sports can fit with the State System's mandate to square expenses with enrollment.
If venue alone were the criteria, Cal U would seem well-positioned to keep, for instance, indoor sports including women's and men's basketball and volleyball, given its $59 million convocation center with an arena for 5,000, just 9 years old.
The center, built mostly with bonds and other debt, embodied Cal U and State System aspirations before student numbers began falling a decade ago and system campuses faced a reckoning on construction debt.
But there's more to the decision than bricks and mortar, or even wins and losses.
The working group has weighed a tangle of criteria, including each sport's ability to draw a diverse student population to campus, alumni and donor support, and the financial burden of keeping six athletic programs on campuses with fewer students versus lost opportunities for those undergraduates if part or all of those programs cease.
Decisions about which coaches and administrators would stay and where they would be located must be made, not to mention how recruiters working for a unified institution could equitably recruit athletes for campuses that could still compete against one another.
A school suddenly without football might mean less interest in the marching band, and as a result, lost enrollment in music programs. Sports management studies might be a tougher sell on a campus without sports.
"What is the financial obligation to students whose sports are integrated and they no longer have a place to play?" asks one among dozens of written questions shared by working group members. "Will their athletic scholarships only be honored for the next year or longer?"
Another asks, "How will an athletic department handle the departure of athletes during the 21-22 [school year] with the anticipated announcement and the potential issue of not being able to fill a sports team during the integration?"
If State System leaders didn't already appreciate the prominence placed on athletics, they received a reminder in October while appearing before the General Assembly in Harrisburg.
There were the usual questions about workforce needs, tuition costs and whether a stingy state government or loose-spending campuses are to blame for this state's high campus costs.
But state Rep. Gerald Mullery, D-Luzerne County, whose daughter plays field hockey at Lock Haven, changed the subject.
"As the father of a student-athlete at one of the six institutions being considered for integration, I can personally speak about the stress, anxiety and fear being experienced not only about the students but by their families," he said. "This process hasn't been easy or enjoyable for anyone."
He said the State System needed to consult with the NCAA and conferences to understand their stake in any potential changes. When the chancellor acknowledged he was not fully aware of a federal court settlement that gave a U.S. Middle District judge jurisdiction to preserve athletic opportunities for female athletes, Mr. Mullery replied:
"Well, you need to be."
Back in 1892, other issues were front and center — namely day and night.
A county fair in Mansfield became an opportunity for General Electric Co. to showcase a relatively new invention. Under the lights, Mansfield University and Wyoming Seminary battled to a scoreless draw at halftime, with accounts saying anyone on the field was at risk of being tackled since no one could be sure which side had the ball.
"While football and electric lights had been around for a couple decades, no one had ever put the two together before,'' said an account in the Mansfield Advertiser.
It also said this of the fair: "The peanut man sang himself hoarse, but he sold peanuts just the same.''
Bill Schackner: bschackner@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1977 and on Twitter @Bschackner.
First Published February 2, 2021, 12:09pm
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