MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Economic woes and education belt-tightening have forced dozens of two-year colleges to cut or suspend teams and even entire athletic departments in the past couple of years.
The plight of junior college athletics attracts far fewer headlines than the postseason payouts and burgeoning TV contracts of major colleges and conferences, but it’s also limited the options of hundreds of fresh-from-high school athletes such as Chelsea Collins.
“It is really hard,” said Collins, a recent graduate of Woodville (Ala.) High School. “It’s my big wake-up call to realize what’s going on in the world and how the economy is.”
Collins committed to play softball for Jefferson State Community College last summer with designs on eventually landing a scholarship to a four-year institution. Then the Birmingham school cut the program, so she signed with Northwest-Shoals Community College — which dropped sports altogether a few weeks later.
In California, about 40 teams have been dropped or suspended in the past two years, said Carlyle Carter, executive director of the California Community College Athletic Association. Carter said other schools aborted plans to drop a women’s sport because of concerns about complying with Title IX.
Mississippi community colleges have dropped 10 teams and a system in St. Louis has more than halved its number by consolidating among the three schools that have sports.
The Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges, which oversees 35 community college programs in Washington and Oregon, has had one school drop men’s and women’s tennis, another the golf teams and a third volleyball and golf, executive director Dick McClain said.
Members also reduced schedules by 10 percent three years ago. McClain said the effects of budget cuts have been minimized because those schools fund athletics mostly through student fees.
The largest group representing junior colleges, the Colorado Springs-based National Junior College Athletic Association, has been notified that six of its 517 members lost sports or athletic departments, director Mary Ellen Leicht said.
