By Khalida Sarwari
West Valley College is considering getting rid of its football program, a decision the college says it’s making to bridge a $1.5 million budget deficit, but one that’s leaving some in the community wondering whether the program is being unfairly targeted.
The elimination of the football program isn’t the only thing on West Valley’s chopping block. The bulk of the other cuts center around layoffs and reductions, according to Scott Ludwig, a spokesman for the college. The football program would be one of several casualties in a restructuring process under way at the college.
That process began about a year ago when the college council began putting together a plan to figure out how to meet the projected deficit, said college president Brad Davis. Following an evaluation of the college’s student services, academic affairs and athletics over the fall and spring, a list of 20 areas targeted for potential reduction was reviewed over the summer and then further cut down to a plan that recommended the following: targeted layoffs of administrators and “classified” staff, reassignments, deletion of vacant positions and elimination of the football program. The potential annual savings for this plan was estimated at about $200,000.
“These cuts are necessary to ensure that our expenses are in line with our revenue,” Davis said. “We are seeking to achieve a structurally sound budget moving forward.”
Moreover, he said, as part of the restructuring process, the college is shifting its focus to other areas, such as bolstering transfer opportunities and placing greater emphasis on basic skills as well as career and technical education. In essence, the college is prioritizing areas that serve a broader population of students and programs that have high waiting lists, such as math and English, over those that serve a relatively small number of students, such as football.
This is neither the first time that the football program has been threatened nor that the school eliminated an athletic program. The last such cut was of the wrestling and men’s and women’s cross country programs in 2010.
People opposed to cutting football wonder why the college is making the decision at the expense of a program that has produced numerous graduates, transfers, successful business professionals and community leaders throughout its 50-year history. Some claim the plan is “fiscally irresponsible” and hurts the college’s enrollment numbers as well as campus diversity.
One such person is West Valley head football coach Jim Winkler.
“The big thing is just the 75 male students on campus will probably go to another school and their friends and everybody who goes along with them,” said Winkler. “We’re probably one of the most diverse groups on campus; we’ve got 75 student athletes that represent 30 different high schools in the area. Over half of the team is minority student athletes.”
Winkler joined the program in 2002 as an assistant coach and has worked his way up to a tenured instructor, which means the school would retain him, but in a different position in the physical education department.
“I’ve been coaching for 25 years,” he said. “I coach football, that’s what I do. If not at West Valley, I’d probably have to look elsewhere.”
But, for now, Winkler said, he’s focusing on maintaining morale and getting his team ready for the final three games of their season. After that, a meeting between the team, coaches and Davis has been tentatively planned, Winkler said.
“We haven’t thrown in the towel,” he said. “We’re going to fight it. It’s that valuable to these young men and this institution.”
The public and campus community have had opportunities to weigh in on the issue at six college council and two town hall meetings. Doug Jonathan, a Saratoga businessman and former volunteer coach and student athlete at West Valley, has attended a few of the meetings to voice his disagreement with the college’s proposal. He’s been rallying to keep football in the curriculum–a sport, he said, that’s “as American as the flag.”
“Clearly there’s an opportunity for people who, without football, perhaps wouldn’t be attending college,” said Jonathan. “Everybody has a different reason and a different kind of ability and circumstance in order to get admission. By getting rid of a program that affects such a large number of people, and without stated good reason … this whole thing makes no sense.”
Jonathan’s sentiments are succinctly echoed in a letter addressed to West Valley College by former student athlete Duane Lee Jr.: “If the program is stripped, what happens to the student athlete like me?
“We were small, we had few numbers and we could never pull it all together to have the kind of success we wanted between the lines, but off the field, in the classroom and even in life I felt that my experiences in the program helped refine me as a player, as a student and young man,” Lee wrote.
Jonathan said he and others have raised the possibility of securing private endowments from the local business community to keep the program alive, but the idea was “dismissed matter-of-factly” by Davis.
“The comment was floated by an associate at the college,” Jonathan said. “He asked the question in the meeting, if he were to write a check tomorrow for the cost of the program, would the president take it off the recommended cuts? And the president said ‘no.’ ”
Davis has responded that waiting to receive funding on an annual basis “places the program in an untenable situation.”
“You’d essentially be waiting each year for monies to come in to determine if you have a team,” he said.
Davis said he planned to present a budget proposal with the recommended cuts to the West Valley-Mission Community College District board of trustees on Nov. 1. Implementation of the cuts, if they are approved, would occur between November and June, Davis said.
“Any reduction of any position or team or program is a very difficult one, and the college has endeavored to proceed in a serious, thoughtful and transparent way,” he said. “Consensus is difficult to come by, but I’m proud of the college community and how it has come around these difficult cuts and is supportive … as we revitalize and continue to evolve down the road.”
Proponents of the football program have created a Facebook page to mobilize community support for the continuation of the program. To view the page, visit facebook.com/saveWVfootball.
