As posted on the Football Board in response the possibility of Archery getting axed.

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A sport that will be added before we know it will be women's lacrosse. The game is growing by leaps and bounds in Dallas, Austin, and Houston. All the private schools play it, and many of the super high schools play it.

Women's Lacrosse

-All you need is a soccer field or track infield to play on.
-Spring sport
-Minimal equipment costs (not like the men's game in terms of helmets, shoulder pads, etc)
-A&M Women's program is very succesful at the US Lacrosse Club Level (the majority of the club team is made up of Women who played in high school)
-Carries a roster of about 30 (great for gender equity numbers)
-NCAA Championship Sport
-There is a women's lacrosse conference in California and in the Pacific Northwest with the same configuration of large schools and small schools (Oregon DI and DII Private Schools)

A perfect conference could be created between A&M, Texas, Baylor, Rice, Trinity, TCU, SMU, and Tulane.

Give the sport ten more years of growth at the high school level, possibly becoming a UIL sport and it will be considered as was Soccer 15 years ago.

Unfortunately, Men's Lacrosse will suffer the same fate as Men's Soccer at the collegiate level in Texas.

I just wonder if there won't be a replacement. Equestrian probably evens out with football, so they don't need another sport.

CP18, a question for you. How can Men's lacrosse meet the same fate as Men's soccer when Men's lacrosse is STILL a club sport at A&M, tu, tech, lsu, etc.? If you are saying that Men's lacrosse will never be a NCAA sanctioned sport in Texas, you are probably right (unfortunately), but it never has been NCAA sanctioned in Texas. A&M has a very strong Men's Club team and competes on the national level through the USLIA. I don't see that changing as long as the current coach is in place, they continue to get top quality Texas HS talent that have been playing since Middle School, and get strong alumni support from former A&M players. Your response?

What I meant is that no major university in Texas will ever add Men's Lacrosse, which is the same fate for Men's Soccer. Granted, SMU has Men's Soccer at the NCAA level, along with some very small DIII schools I believe in Texas. UT, A&M, LSU, Tech, OU, etc will never add Men's Soccer or Men's Lacrosse, no matter what the growth. Especially Lacrosse on the men's side, just to darn expensive.

How do you know so much about the Men's Lax team? Are you an alumni? Lets just say I know the head coach and many men's lax alumni very well

Cost isn't the issue -- the archery budget is relatively high. Title IX, which is ridiculous in many ways, is supposed to provide "equal" opportunities for men and women in collegiate athletics. Because we are mandated to have an equal amount of men's and women's scholarships, if we cut archery, we have to replace it with another women's sport, which will take over the budget and scholarships currently allocated to archery.

The archery budget is $250,000 less than 1 percent of the athletic budget.
The cost of a title 9 lawsuit will be much more.

Harry, archery only has five scholarships. If they have enough equestrian scholarships, they might not have to make up the five they lose.

That's a good point I hadn't considered.

Actually, I heard through the grapevine, the other day, that if archery is indeed dropped, Bill Byrne is considering adding women's bowling as a replacement.

Reasons:

-- Emerging NCAA sport (42 schools, majority in South and Southeast, and a majority of the schools from the Big 10 will sponsor NCAA teams next year)
-- A full team is only 8 members, which could more easily split up the 5 ships available to archery than any of the other club sports that also have NCAA championships.
-- Bowling could easliy operate under a $250,000 budget and hit all the tournaments it needs to.
-- Bowling had the largest participation of any sport in the country for 2003.

And most importantly:
-- Nebraska, Byrne's former school, has had bowling (men's and women's) under it's athletic department for years; women's team is now NCAA

Just remember that nothing has been decided yet, and this is only a rumor.

[This message has been edited by AGSmith (edited 5/2/2004 11:31p).]

if men's soccer were added at a&m, they could quickly become a dominant force with all the talent arrayed in the state of texas

It looks like archery might hang around a little bit longer.

byrne has stated that they will not be replacing archery with any other sport. because of equestrian, he feels title IX isn't going to be an issue.

BBrex- what makes you say archey's gonna be around a while longer.

It's in Byrne's Wednesday column. If archery doesn't grow, it will get cut eventually, but it's not gone yet.