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Please excuse the rant I'm about to go on. Events have taken place at the
University of Louisiana at Monroe (formerly Northeast Louisiana University)
that have hit very close to my heart. Here’s a little background. I signed in
1999 to swim competitively for NLU. About two weeks after I started there,
they changed the name to ULM. This might seem like a minor thing, but this
upset the community and a lot of alumni extremely. I didn’t care very much
at the time. I was getting to swim and got my degree paid for by doing so.
But imagine if you have a degree from NLU when NLU doesn’t even exist
anymore. You’d be slightly upset if you were in those graduates’ shoes.
I swam on the team for four years and coached for one. I was captain for
two of those years and developed a deep sense of pride in my school and
my team. That is a tough thing to do at ULM. The football team might have
won 4 games total in my first two years. The only thing the basketball team
ever had to offer was one of our players, Wojciech Myrda,
With the looming threat of Title IX, the men’s program was constantly under
the threat of being cut. If you are not familiar with Title IX, here is the basis
of it. It mandates that there will be an equal number of female athletes and
scholarships that there are for males. Well that would be fine and dandy if
football didn’t take up about 66 scholarships. Other than the occasional
female punter or place kicker, football is a man’s sport. This leaves the
men's sports at each school at a 66 scholarship deficit to the women. So
what did the geniuses at most schools start doing? They cut men’s teams
like swimming, tennis, soccer, and track and started women’s programs like
rugby, fencing, water polo, and American Gladiators. Ok, I got a little carried
away. The point is, sports that were once considered “lifetime” sports were
in danger of being cut on a national level. The Big XII only has two schools
that carry men’s swim programs to this day. Half of the schools that
recruited me were under the cutting axe at the time.
But despite all of that, we survived the entire time I was there. It came down
to either us or the men’s tennis program during my senior year. The tennis
team got cut and we swam on. The athletic department realized that the
swim team was running self-sufficiently with the exception of the scholarships
we received. We had independent travel and equipment budgets donated
to us. I coached for my fifth year at the school because I was close to all of
Pitt was replaced by Sean Weddell. Sean came from Clemson University as
an assistant coach. He also had experience at Southern Illinois University
and Akron University. He did what he could as far as recruiting on short
notice and picking up the slack in the off season. The swimming alumni all
got a chance to meet Sean and give him input last October when we held a
reunion meet during Homecoming weekend. We really thought the team was
doing well and was going to stay alive under their new coach.
We found out later that Sean had to battle many different things in his first
year. He dealt constantly with an uncooperative administration. When Pitt
was coach, he ran the pool, as well. When he died, everyone wanted their
piece. Sean even had to battle with some of the existing staff. They all felt
they were first in line for some of the power that Pitt had. Most of them lied
and said they were responsible for duties that they had nothing to do with.
Katrina Durrett is a former swimmer up there and Pitt kept her around as an
act of charity. She wasn’t well liked by many of the swimmers. She grabbed
some power with Pitt’s passing and she decided to redecorate the pool. The
team war room became her children’s nursery. We had flags set up at the
pool to honor all of the countries that represented our swim team. Those
were trashed. Tradition was trashed.
After Sean’s first season as head coach ended, he resigned. There were
several reasons, including family issues. But the noncompliant
administration couldn’t have helped. Two months later, a press release
came out that BOTH swim programs were dropped. This left the current
swimmers virtually ZERO time to find a new school. Each scholarship
swimmer was offered a one year extension, however. These guys came to
swim, not sit on their butts for a year and get out of shape while they look for
a new school. So while they scramble for a new school, I made some
inquiries to Bobby Staub, the new Athletic Director (and the third one in 5
years).
The swimming programs were dropped and they are adding women’s golf to
the department. Are you kidding me? Women’s golf? He was quoted in
the paper saying that he felt the community would support women’s golf a bit
more. This guy came from Alabama and apparently isn’t familiar with
Monroe, Louisiana just yet. Monroe could not support their pro hockey or
arena football teams enough to keep them in town. Nobody shows up for
the men’s golf matches. Who is this guy to say the community is going to
support women’s golf? Face it, he didn’t want to take the time and money to
get a new swim coach. So he started a women’s golf team to be coached by
the existing men’s golf coach. He can give all of the statistics he wants
about how this is the better move for the university. But when it comes down
to it, he and the administration are pissing on the traditions that we worked
our butts off to establish at that university. We had NCAA All Americans and
the current team had numerous record holders that were destined to only
get better. This was about money. No doubt. He does not give two craps
about a sport that is only popular every 4 years. And if the entire nation
starts thinking that way, we won’t have anyone who can beat the Australians,
Russians, Swedes, or anyone else in the world by the time Title IX has finally
sucked swimming dry.
I could honestly go on and give you every stat on how this was a stupid
decision monetarily as well. But I’m not going to. I would like to encourage
parents and future parents to have your children compete in sports like
swimming because it truly does teach them life lessons. I would also like to
point out that some of my best friends were teammates of mine. I would like
to tell parents that swimming would be a great sport for their children to
compete in and continue doing so for their whole lives. But I honestly cannot
say that it would be wise to do that, anymore. There is only stability in a few
sports: football, basketball, and baseball. There will always be money
poured into those sports because they generate money.
To the administration at ULM, and to other schools that treat your student
athletes in the same way, shame on you. Quit turning our universities into
businesses and start creating opportunities for the generations to come.
And you are welcome to always throw up a T for…
T-BONE!
Josh 'T-Bone' Pigott
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