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Questions remain about staying in the NCAA, whether football team will be resurrected and whether club hockey squad will get varsity status
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Published Aug 21, 2024 • Last updated 4 hours ago • 4 minute read
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Questions remain about SFU staying in the NCAA, whether football team will be resurrected, and whether club hockey squad will get varsity status. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG
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The SFU Red Leafs have a new leader. A new master plan for the athletics programs is still being determined.
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The Burnaby Mountain school named Luc Simard as its executive-director of athletics and recreation on Tuesday. The former University of Toronto director of sports and recreation starts his new gig on Sept. 1.
SFU athletics has had interim leadership since August 2023, which is when athletic director Theresa Hanson and the school agreed to part ways.
Simard reports to SFU provost and vice-president academic Dilson Rassier, and Rassier says that the next step for athletics is finalizing a strategic plan that will guide the Red Leafs’ programs for the next several years.
Will SFU stay in NCAA Division 2 — they are the lone Canadian member of the NCAA — or will they bring their teams back to play in Canada West and be part of leagues with the likes of the UBC Thunderbirds and Trinity Western Spartans?
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Will the football team be resurrected after it was shut down initially in April 2023? And will SFU start up a Varsity hockey team, considering the traction the men’s club team has gotten playing NCAA Division I programs the past couple of years?
Those are among the questions that Rassier, Simard and their colleagues will need to answer in the coming months.
SFU is in financial crunch in the midst of all of this. Bob Copeland, who’s the independent adviser SFU brought in to study the prospects for football going forward, released a report in September 2023 that pointed to a budget deficit of as much as $1.77 million in athletics when football was running.
And Postmedia reported in December the SFU was going to cut department budgets across the school by as much as eight per cent, due to rising costs and declining revenue.
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The press release that SFU put out on Tuesday to announce the addition of Simard made reference to a “renewed strategic plan that ensures financial optimization and revenue generation.”
Rassier said that work on the long-range plan has long been underway and now with Simard on side he hopes to have it complete in the next two or three months.
Asked about whether sports programs might need to be cut when all is said and done, Rassier said: “Hopefully not, but it’s premature to say. Hopefully not.”
He also balked at the idea that bringing in someone like Simard from a Canadian school was tied to SFU returning to play in Canada, saying that “we wanted to have the best person we could find and it had nothing to with NCAA or U Sports.”
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For what it’s worth, he also didn’t completely nix the idea of SFU coming back to Canada West either. Playing teams like UBC and Trinity Western more frequently would cut costs.
“We are part of the NCAA and nothing has changed so far,” Rassier said. “We are not planning any change as of now, but we are developing a plan that needs to be sustainable and feasible for the next many years to come. If, after consultation and developing that plan, we have an indication we have to consider leaving we will consider it. As of now, no decision has been made.”
With football, the coaches have left. Players have gone to other schools. And there’s the financial impact.
Football dates back to 1965 at SFU and the program has produced several CFL stars. It has struggled since moving to the NCAA, including going 4-63 over their past seven seasons. SFU was set to lose its membership in the Texas-based football league it was playing in before it was shut down and there are a dwindling number of Division 2 schools playing football in the west.
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Moving the football team to Canada West and keeping the other teams in the NCAA would take a special exemption from both Canada West and the national U Sports body.
“As of now, the program is closed. We have not decided yet if it’s going to stay closed permanently or it’ll come back but hopefully we’re going to be at that position very soon,” Rassier said of football.
As for hockey, coach Mark Coletta told Postmedia last September that a self-funded SFU men’s hockey team be contenders in NCAA Division 1 within five seasons. SFU could have a Division 1 hockey team because there’s no national championship tournament at the Division 2 level.
Coletta’s team has been playing teams at that level in exhibition, highlighted by recording a 1-1 draw with the nationally No. 2 ranked Boston University Terriers in Boston last January. They’ve got road games this year with the likes of Bowling Green State, UMass and Lake Superior State.
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“In terms of having them as part of the department, it’s going to depend on the strategic plan,” Rassier said.
The executive director of athletics and recreation is a new role at SFU. Rassier didn’t rule out out also bringing on an athletic director to work under Simard.
“We’re still in the final stages to see what the proper structure will be,” Rassier explained.
SFU started out with its teams in the American small-college NAIA. They moved their basketball squads to Canada West in 2000-01. Others followed before they joined the NCAA.
Going off the posting for his old job at the University of Toronto, Simard worked in both athletics and recreation in his time there. The posting states the director of sports and recreation “provides administrative leadership and management oversight to the athletics, physical activity programs, equity and client services initiatives in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education for the University of Toronto Community.”
sewen@postmedia.com
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Courtesy : https://theprovince.com/sports/university/sfu-names-new-executive-athletic-director-whats-next-for-sports-teams-at-the-school