In an announcement on Tuesday afternoon, La Salle University announced plans to cut several sports from the school’s athletic slate, including the softball program.
Citing a Tuesday recommendation from the university’s board of trustees, the move will take the school’s athletics offering from 25 sponsored sports to 18 sports. In addition to the softball program, other similarly-affected programs at La Salle include baseball; men’s swimming and diving; men’s and women’s tennis; men’s water polo; and volleyball. Each of the affected teams will compete in their respective seasons, as allowed, before their respective programs are dissolved.
“Through this process, it has become abundantly clear that the existing sport-offering structure at La Salle is not a sustainable model for success. The size of our athletics department compromises our ability to provide an exceptional, transformational experience for our student-athletes. Our resources and support services for our student-athletes are stretched too thinly across too many sports teams,” read part of the school’s statement on Tuesday.
Continuing, the statement said, “Simply put, La Salle Athletics cannot continue to sponsor 25 varsity sports at a competitive level. Sustaining an athletics department that offers more Atlantic 10-sponsored teams than any other in the conference at a university positioned in the conference’s bottom-quartile in enrollment is not feasible. The rising costs associated with providing a high-quality Division I student-athlete experience and the financial challenges incurred by the department contributed to this decision. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the need for this change.”
The Explorers softball program finished the 2019 season with a 12-33 overall record, including a 5-17 offering in conference play. The team was 0-10 during the 2020 season before the COVID-19 pandemic prematurely ended the campaign. Head coach Brooke Darreff enters her fourth season as the Explorers’ head coach in 2021, and recently hired Temple alum Sarah Prezioso as an assistant coach.
