Andrew Tervooren has so much free time these days, the Rutgers senior doesn’t know what to do with himself.

No more afternoon practice Monday to Friday. No more weekend tournaments. No more road trips for away meets at Columbia or Connecticut – 10 guys, their racquets and a scholarship, and a half among them piling into a triple-seat van.

No more tennis.

Rutgers cut Tervooren’s team, for which he played third singles and second doubles, at the end of the 2006-07 season. Tennis was one of six sports the athletic department axed, part of a budget decision designed to save the university $2 million.

‘I still have this year of eligibility in my back pocket that’s just sort of going to waste,’ Tervooren said. ‘I spent a lot of years of my life training to become the player that I am, or that I was, in college. To be deprived of one of only four years that you’re given, it’s unfair.’

Tervooren’s plight was once a potential fate to be accepted by athletes at smaller Division I schools, mid-majors with athletic departments that struggle to get by. No longer.

Just ask the Big East Conference.

When Syracuse decided to cut the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams at the end of the 2007-08 season, it became the fourth Big East school in the last five years to cut programs. West Virginia cut five sports after the 2002-03 season; St. John’s eliminated six after the 2003-04 season.

Such is the current state of college athletics, where costs are rising and only football and men’s basketball teams make money. Athletic departments struggle to strike a balance, often resorting to drop non-revenue sports to save money. Athletes like Tervooren can be left to twist in the wind.

Sports have disappeared at schools like Syracuse before. Women’s soccer, lacrosse and softball, for example, displaced men’s gymnastics and wrestling in 1997. But then the culprit was Title IX, a piece of federal legislation from 1972, which mandated equal opportunities for men’s and women’s sports.

This is different. This is about money.

John Paquette, associate commissioner for the Big East, stressed that these were ‘institutional’ decisions, ones made individually by each university.

And separate reasons for the cuts bubble to the surface for each university: At Syracuse, it was a reluctance to spend $30 million on a new natatorium for the swimming and diving teams. At Rutgers, it was part of university-wide cutbacks.

As costs for athletic departments increase – scholarship fees, travel expenses, facility upgrades – and revenues remain stagnant, something has to give. Hence, tennis players like Tervooren are being told to pack up their rackets and leave, and swimmers like those in Syracuse are asked to towel off and head home.

‘Expenditures are outpacing revenues three to one,’ said Mark Mullady, national program director for Collegiate Financial Services, a consulting firm that advises approximately 100 college athletics departments. ‘And the bigger schools are the ones that are trying to upgrade a lot of their facilities in order to keep up with everyone so they can continue to make money within college athletics.’

If revenues refuse to rise – and costs refuse to meet them halfway – this could spread to even larger schools with expansive athletic departments, such as ones in the Big Ten or the Southeastern Conference, Mullady said. The Big East may just be the beginning.

Chris Monasch, athletic director at St. John’s, understands Mullady’s three-to-one deficit. Though he was not at St. John’s when the school cut football, men’s indoor and outdoor track, men’s cross country along with men’s and women’s swimming, he understands then-director Dave Wegrzyn’s troubles.

At St. John’s, he oversees a department with a budget generally more than $20 million. But the money the program brings in – a sum of ticket sales, corporate sponsorships, television contracts and fundraising – was only around $6-7 million last year, he said.

Though the school added men’s lacrosse one year following the loss of the other programs, they have no plans to add any other teams to the 17 they have currently. Money’s too tight.

‘Our goal is not to break even – because we’re not going to get there,’ Monasch said.

Trying to break even was one of the reasons for Rutgers’ removal of men’s heavyweight and lightweight crew, fencing, swimming and diving, tennis and women’s fencing.

Attempts to contact officials from the Rutgers athletic department to comment on this story were unsuccessful.

The Associated Press reported in a July 2006 article that Rutgers found itself more than $80 million in the hole for the next year’s budget. Cutbacks were necessary across the board, leading to the removal of the teams.

Four of the six teams cut were individual sports, a trend that’s prevalent for the three other schools.

But that doesn’t bode much of a problem for the Big East, Paquette said. Though the conference was concerned that schools had to cut programs, the conference remains strong by not cutting team sports and hurting other teams’ postseason chances.

‘If the schools make decisions that could impact or endanger our ability to have automatic bids to NCAA postseason play, then I think that would require or would warrant more discussion,’ Paquette said.

When West Virginia downsized in 2003, the five they cut were individual sports: men’s tennis, indoor and outdoor track, cross country and coed rifle. The athletic department is self-sufficient and bears all of its costs, with no help from any other source, including the university.

Terri Howes, assistant athletic director at WVU, gave a simple reason for the cuts – and a common one.

‘One of the things we decided was, to be competitive and still self-supporting, we needed to increase revenues and reduce expenses,’ she said. ‘So that’s where the decision came from.’

In evaluating which sports to eliminate, West Virginia evaluated its options in a five-prong plan: level of participation, competitiveness, number of athletes affected, financial impact and gender equity.

This might sound familiar to the swimmers and divers at SU.

Syracuse also consulted the same areas, but specifically identified financial concerns as a primary reason for cutting the teams. The expected costs for a new natatorium – which members of the swim teams have since disputed – were too much in the end.

‘If we are going to have a swimming program here, then it’s very important that we have the resources to do it the right way,’ Syracuse Director of Athletics Daryl Gross said in June. ‘Part of those resources would be getting a new natatorium, a new pool facility, diving and all those types of things. The cost for those is enormous, and they’re costs that we can’t put into it right now.’

But for some of the athletes, it’s not about needing a new pool. It’s about finishing what they started.

Ryan Corcoran had chances to swim at North Carolina State, Bucknell and Johns Hopkins. But he chose Syracuse, excited about both the team and the school.

Now? Frustrated with the team’s small chance for survival – the university says the decision is final – he is considering transferring. Corcoran mentioned both Drexel and Cal Poly as possible destinations.

‘It’s just a shame that swimming, one of the reasons I wanted to go to school here, is going to be taken,’ the sophomore said.

Tervooren isn’t considering transferring. He did that once already – leaving Rhode Island to play tennis at Rutgers. Starting over once was enough.

Now, he splits an apartment with Arjun Vaidya, the team’s former first singles player. This time last year, they were both Division I athletes – even if they were playing out the string on a lame duck team’s farewell tour.

These days, they’re just a pair of regular college students who happen to be excellent at tennis.

‘We’re not traveling around and playing other schools, but you still have the sport,’ Tervooren said. ‘It’s something you’ll always have, I think, the sport. And it’s the same with all the other ones that were cut. It’s something that all the other athletes will have for the rest of their lives.

‘But there’s just something to be said for being able to compete at a high level in college – (something) that we had taken away from us.’

Published on November 5, 2007 at 12:00 pm