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On August 19, the university announced it would cut gymnastics, hockey and ski teams to save about $ 2.5 million per year. Cathy Sandeen, then chancellor, said the decision was “devastating”.
Sparky Anderson, the ski coach, was on a father-daughter camping trip when he learned of the proposal to cut teams.
“It won’t work,” he thought. “But it’s going to be a lot of work for me.”
“Athletes set goals”.
One of the safest ways for college administrators to cause an uproar is to eliminate sports. Iowa and the state of Michigan found themselves in court. Brown became the target of a well-coordinated campaign that political strategists might have envied. Stanford, one of the most revered programs in all college sports, faced months of public and private pressure before backing down on its plan to eliminate 11 teams.
So, less than four years after Anderson and others won out in yet another skirmish over sports funding, a new wave of anger swept through Alaska. Sandeen, who had arrived in 2018, was the target of much of the grumbling.
“Immediately the phones started ringing,” said Kathie Bethard, a former callback club president whose son played hockey at UAA. “Hockey is rooted here. Skiing is anchored here. My God, the two main winter sports and she cuts them? It was just like, ‘Are you kidding me? This is Alaska.
A sports program with a national footprint, she continued, was what separated a university like Alaska Anchorage from a community college.
Like-minded people besieged the regents with calls and emails. Sandeen, now president of California State University, East Bay, recalled that it was “early enough” in the uprising that Alaskan officials began looking for a way to save sports.
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