Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Save Maryland XC and Track!

Since this has wearing on me today, I'm going to keep putting the word out there for all to see. 

In the event you were unaware, the University of Maryland is likely going to be cutting men's cross country and track and field, along with other programs, effective July 2012, due to budgetary concerns.  The school's athletic department is operating in a huge deficit right now, and they have decided that the relatively minimal amounts to fund these teams is going to make some kind of difference in the long run. 

If you've been following on Twitter or Facebook, you might have seen this today (probably by me) - but there is a group on FB "Save Maryland Men's XC/Track and Field" and the appropriate hashtag has been #saveumdxcandtrack.  Whether you went to Maryland or not, or whether you ran in college or not, I'm sure you can at the very least empathize with those who will be affected.  Running, for most of us, is a hobby.  None of us expects to earn a living at it, we do it because we love to compete.  At Maryland, that's all these kids are doing it for.  They don't have scholarships, they are barely funded.  They keep a skeleton crew for the cross country team, and the track team is among the smallest I've ever seen for a big university.  But this is a team with a great history in track and field, and it would be extremely sad for me to see this team just vanish.  It would be like a part of me, personally, never existed.

There's really not a whole lot we can do, unless anybody knows of any talent contests where the first prize is $57 million dollars, but helping spread the word is always appreciated. 

I know we have a lot of Terp alums within our group, some of whom ran, such as myself, Denise, Bobby Van Allen, Conrad, Erik Westlund, Andy Gell, Mike Prada, Dan Miranda, Alex Waldt (who is there now), guys like Matt Adami, Matt Sanders, Adam Forgione, some of our GRC friends like Pat Reaves, Danielle Siebert (who coaches there currently), and I'm sure that list goes on.  Many of us have gone to the UMD indoor and outdoor meets, including everybody's favorite, the MD Twilight Meet featuring the Alumni Mile.  Some of you have accompanied me for runs at Greenbelt or from CP to DC, and dined at the Bagel Place afterwards. 

That's all I wanted to say, I appreciate having the ability to do so in this forum.  Keep the faith, keep running!

3 comments:

KLIM said...

Jake Klim "likes" this post

Dan said...

When you mentioned other schools that cut their track programs, but then pointed out that UMD is a division 1 ACC school, it really showed front and center how sad this is.

JAR said...

This does SUCK!