After the recent sports cuts, San Francisco State University will be left with just 10 sports next fall, which is the minimum amount to be eligible to compete in NCAA Division II. But how will the budget cuts affect the remaining sports that weren’t cut? 

The 10 remaining sports include men’s and women’s basketball and cross country, softball, volleyball, wrestling, women’s soccer, men’s track and field, and women’s outdoor track and field. While the remaining sports won’t be discontinued, they too will feel the effects of the budget cuts. 

According to Brandon Davis, the interim athletics director, their department is funded by Instructionally Related Activities and was over budget by about $400,000 just on the operations side, not including scholarships and coaching salaries. 

“There were months of data collection, of looking at budgets, looking at deficits, looking at everything that it takes to be a college athletics program,” Davis said. “What we’ve looked at is how we can remain sustainable moving into the future with a program, so we’re not in a situation like Sonoma State where they’re looking at cutting the entire program.”

Despite the athletic department overhaul, the department is still figuring out ways to save money with their remaining teams.

“We have to play our conference schedule, so we really figure out what that looks like, and then we kind of go from there and work around that,” Davis said. “We’ll look at ways to save, whether that’s partnering with certain hotels, more day trips to regional opponents like a Menlo or a Dominican instead of going to Southern California or out of state and just finding ways that we preserve that student-athlete experience.”

For men’s basketball head coach Vince Inglima, the budget cuts will bring a new challenge for his team going forward relating to scholarships or the lack thereof. 

“We have no scholarship money to give going forward. So it’s going to be challenging to put a competitive roster on the court,” Inglima said. “It’s an uneasy time and it’s challenging recruiting because you’re answering all those questions like ‘Is your department going to get cut?’ ‘Oh you’re cutting sports, what’s happening here and there?’ So it does get a little bit tiring answering those all the time and still trying to sell the program and the university in the best light as you try to attract the highest quality student-athletes.” 

Inglima said that the scholarship situation, combined with the uncertainty surrounding the future of the team, has led some athletes to seek opportunities elsewhere by entering the NCAA transfer portal.

“As of right now, I don’t know that we’re going to return like three points a game from last year,” Inglima said. “So it’s going to be a new look, which is a different challenge in coaching, and we’ll tackle that as it comes.”

In working with a reduced scholarship fund, one thing teams are being encouraged to do is take the opportunity to raise money for an endowed scholarship fund.

According to Davis, endowed scholarship funds require an initial $25,000 to establish the fund. After that, around 3-4% of the fund is paid back to the fund each year. Davis hopes the endowments will grow enough yearly to garner more money for scholarships. 

“You’re getting a couple of grand off of the $25,000, and that might not seem like a lot,” Davis said. “But over time, you’re getting two grand every year, and then you still have that money in the bank. So that’s a way for us to be sustainable.”

A sport that faces uncertainty and changes heading into the next year is women’s track and field. In SFSU President Lynn Mahoney’s initial email to the school community, it was announced that women’s indoor track and field would be discontinued. SFSU’s director of communications Bobby King later clarified that women’s track and field would be an “outdoor–distance focus” sport going forward. 

However, junior jumper Sabrina Carle-Parra said the changes being made to women’s track and field will be more than the university is revealing. 

“There’s not gonna be any sprinters, jumpers, throwers, which is what track and field is, so you can’t call it a track and field team because it’s only cross country just using their eligibility to run in the spring. There aren’t gonna be any women’s track and field athletes, it’s only men.” 

For volleyball, head coach Matt Hoffman said recruiting and travel are the biggest adjustments his team will have to make going forward. 

“In the recruiting field, that is the biggest hit, and we’re going to have to find ways to get creative to find more revenue to do recruiting,” Hoffman said. “We can’t just go wherever we want anymore. You have to stay a little more local for the most part. So we’re staying home one of our weekends next year, and so one of our two non-conference weekends, we’re always going to be either here or at Cal State East Bay, so we don’t have to travel too far on one of our two non-conference weekends.” 

While these decisions have not been easy, some coaches appreciate the school’s transparency regarding the budget cuts. 

“President Mahoney’s been phenomenal,” women’s soccer head coach John DeMartini said. “It’s the first time in the seven years that I’ve been here, between being an assistant and a head coach, that I actually saw a balance sheet and got to understand what was going on. That kind of transparency is awesome, and that’s what we need here.”

Despite the challenges and uncertainty posed by budget cuts and reduced resources, there’s a sense of optimism that a road to recovery is possible.

“I think the university as a whole is wondering where the bottom is on these cuts, and sometimes you just kind of want to get to the bottom so that you can start climbing back out,” Inglima said. “I think I’m confident that we can get on solid footing over the next year, that we can stop the bleeding and get on a good foundation.”