Lou Walker Fires Back

Remember Syracuse A.D. Daryl Gross?  Yeah, that guy who dumped the men's and women's swim program!

A recent article on "non-revenue" sports at S.U. (here) gave Gross high marks.

If football is the red mark on Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross' track record at Syracuse, the non-revenue sports are his gold star.

Quick note to writer Chris Carlson:  The only Orange sport in the black is the men's basketball program.  Therefore, foosball is a non-revenue sport.

One of the more controversial decisions Gross has made regarding non-revenue sports was cutting both the men's and women's swimming and diving programs in 2007. 

The decision was made at the time because the school's facilities did not allow it to compete at a national level and its geography made recruiting elite swimmers difficult. Building a new facility, it was decided, would be too costly.

AAAA-NE head coach Lou Walker was the Orange head coach at the time.  His letter to the editor takes on Carlson and his slanted story.

While I would agree that my discussions with Daryl at the time were relative to the age of the facilities I would disagree that there was any discussion relative to "geography and recruiting elite swimmers."

Gross replaced the swim programs with a women's hockey team.

At the time, NostraButton reminded readers* that The 'Cuse would be hunting for lady rinksters outside the state (and country).  N.Y.S. girls' high school hockey just wasn't up to supplying a D-I program with the required talent and numbers.

(via The Post-Standard)

In May of 2013, this post provided an update on the hockey team's "progress".

They've imported six (6) Canadian women and have only four (4) New Yorkers on their roster of seventeen (17). 

Women's ice hockey isn't an Atlantic Coast Conference sport.  The program bleeds red ink.

Time for another update.  This year's squad is 4-8-7.  There's no conference record, since they aren't in a conference.  Not sure what universe Carlson was posting his article from when he stated:

The team has become a winning program under Paul Flanagan in short order and has reached a conference title game.

Since inception, their record is 97-107-24...almost "average".  Nothing wrong with that, but not exactly the "winning program" Carlson makes them out to be.

(via The Post-Standard)

When the decision was made to scrap swimming and add women's hockey, it was supposed to help with Title IX numbers (and it has), make the overall athletics program more "competitive" (it hasn't), and save money (it hasn't even come close).

The current S.U. women's hockey roster lists twenty-five (25) players.  Eleven (11) are Canadians and two (2) are New Yorkers.

Funding player scholarships alone (at the NCAA limit of 18, times an annual cost of attendance of nearly $60,000) costs the university around a million bucks each year!

(via Cuse)

Good News

With attendance numbers approaching those of the on-ice participants, the program has yet to cost the university a billion dollars.

Bad News

The women's hockey program needs a new facility.

I wonder how Gross - along with his partner in propaganda Carlson - will spin this one...





* I believe there were eleven (11) of y'all at the time...