“I bet you 25 or 30 years ago, if I would’ve had a donor that only wanted to support let’s just say baseball, the softball one would’ve fallen and lagged behind,” Kelly said, adding: “But because our staff’s become educated, to become more mindful of this as a whole, it became a joint project. Kelly also points to a roughly $1.5 million summer project to renovate batting cages and pitching areas for baseball and softball, pushed by a joint-messaging fundraiser emphasizing equitable treatment. That would push the Bulls to 12 women’s sports and 21 overall. “And that is a big focus of this campaign.”Īt Vanderbilt, Lee’s department recently announced the Southeastern Conference school would add women’s volleyball for the 2025-26 season, a resurrection for a program discontinued after 1979-80.Īnd at South Florida, the AAC program has announced additions of women’s lacrosse for 2023-24 and women’s beach volleyball for 2024-25. “I will say that (the campaign) of $100 million just for women’s athletics is something we’ve never focused on,” said UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham, who oversees a 28-sport program with 41 of 57 team national championships coming in women’s sports. The campaign continues at the Atlantic Coast Conference school, which fielded women’s varsity teams in 1971 before Title IX’s implementation, even after exceeding a $100 million target. North Carolina’s efforts include the ongoing FORevHER Tar Heels campaign launched in 2019 to support 15 women’s programs with facility upgrades, scholarship needs and mentorship programs. But I’m not aware of too many that are in that situation.” “Unless, if they already had a preponderance or excess of women’s sports and women’s student-athletes and women’s student experience, then maybe they did. “I imagine it would have made it much harder for anyone to actually consider the cutting of women’s sports,” South Florida athletics director Michael Kelly said.
And ultimately, cuts hit more men’s programs (47) than women’s (22) in Division I, according to data from The Associated Press and wrestling site Mat Talk Almanac. Schools that chose cuts had to consider Title IX compliance numbers for remaining programs.
The goal is ensuring men and women have equitable participation opportunities as well as access to scholarships.īut the shutdown created financial pressures, particularly for Division I programs with lost revenue from the canceled NCAA men’s basketball tournament and uncertainty about whether football - which largely funds Olympic and lower-profile sports programs - would go forward at all. Compliance can be measured in multiple ways, including whether the overall program’s gender breakdown is proportionate to that of the general student body.