Obit watch: March 21, 2023.

The athletic program at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.

All of it. All 19 sports will be abolished after the spring semester.

Obscure school, who cares, right? They were actually a Division 1 school, which kind of surprised me: the basketball team was 14-16 this season, and 7-9 in the Northeast Conference.

In its statement the school cited “increased operating expenses, flattening revenue streams, and plateauing enrollment in part due to a shrinking pool of high school graduates in the aftermath of the pandemic” as reasons for the need to restructure. Former chief operating officer Tim Cecere has also been appointed acting school president with the board granting Dr. Miguel Martinez-Saenz his request for a personal leave.

…

The men’s basketball program, which dates back to 1896, was the oldest college program in New York City and a charter member of the NCAA.

The school states they intend to honor all current athletic scholarships, but the athletic staff will be let go at the end of the semester.

More from ESPN, which claims 21 teams instead of 19:

The move comes as part of larger restructuring of the private Catholic school located in Brooklyn. Enrollment at the school is about 2,300 undergraduate students.

Just for the sake of comparison, my old school has an undergraduate enrollment of 2,800 to 3,500 (US News gives two different figures)…and the basketball programs are DII. As far as I know, St. Ed’s has never tried to compete in D1.

It seems to me that it might have made more sense to drop down to D2, rather than eliminating athletics totally. But St. Francis just moved to a new facility…that doesn’t have a gym or pool. The original plan was apparently that they were going to share those things with some other school. Perhaps that turned out to be impractical?

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