UNCW Athletic Director Jimmy Bass said the intercollegiate athletics budget is in the best shape that it has been in over the past eight years, but not much has been explained as to how the budget was balanced.

In order to balance the budget, certain programs within the athletic department had to be minimized or diminished to leave room for growth.With this knowledge, over the past three years UNCW’s Athletic Department has attempted to cut certain sports in order to balance the budget.

One team in particular that experienced the threat of the chopping block was the track team, so much so that last year’s Head Coach, Jim Sprecher, chose to leave UNCW.

Sprecher said that the instability within the athletic department, which affected his professional career and personal life, was the reason for leaving UNCW to become Head Coach at Lynchburg College.

“When you are trying to maintain a championship level team and for three years the threat of being dropped, (it) does take a toll on you,” Sprecher said.

According to Sprecher, over the past three years the athletic department has tried to do away with men’s cross country, men’s indoor track, and eventually disband all of the track team except for women’s cross country.

“The athletes are always in turmoil because they don’t know from year to year if they are going to exist (at the university) or not. From a professional standpoint, that was one reason (for leaving).”

Not only did this state of constant confusion lead some team members to leave for other schools, but it also affected recruiting. Sprecher said that recruits start to doubt whether the school is still going to have a program in the future.

Ultimately, the Chancellor is the final decision maker over athletics and how its resources are invested, and both Chancellor Gary Miller and Chancellor Jose Sartarelli played roles in keeping the track team intact.

But if no teams were cut entirely, how did the department successfully balance the budget?

Vice Chancellor Rick Whitfield said, “…this past fiscal year was the end of the first three year budget and we built the fund balance back from $60,000 to a little over $1.5 million through financial models that we put together.”

Whitfield explained how the department made decisions to reallocate resources within that budget during budget meetings.

Whitfield also explained how the athletic department has something called reserves, a safety net, which before this year was almost completely tapped.

The money for reserves comes from excess revenues like extra student fees. Sprecher claimed these fees really keep major programs afloat.

When asked how the department planned to budget in the future, Bass mentioned raising more resources from private sources, like the Seahawk Club. For example, in regards to the track team, more than 700 donors contributed over $250,000 to support the UNCW track and field program and keep it on campus.

On top of budgeting, the different teams are all required to do more with less. However, this grows increasingly more difficult as the school continues to grow and the university tries to offer more with less resources.

Bass also discussed engaging the community in order to keep ticket sales up for “revenue generating sports” like men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball, men’s soccer, women’s soccer and softball.

But Bass never mentioned ticket sales for other sports here at UNCW, begging the question if threatening to cut teams is a scare tactic for non- revenue generating sports teams.

Overall, current stability from a balanced budget does not count out instability from previous poor budgets and conservative budgeting.

Sprecher believes that the growing size of UNCW tied in with the department’s conservative budgeting and new NCAA rules will only make budgeting for the department harder in the future.