However, while McCoy and her team are not responsible for how WSU got into this situation, they are accountable for how WSU responds to it.
That is to say that the optics of a 10-minute Zoom meeting, in which 18-24-year-olds learn that their or their teammates’ athletic pursuits will no longer be supported by WSU, followed by little communication or dialogue, are not great and could have been easily avoided.
Would a question-and-answer period during the Zoom meeting have changed the outcome of numerous current athletes and alumni scorning the university? No, probably not.
However, student-athletes, many of whom have moved across the country or the world to entrust their athletic and academic careers to an institution, deserve a little more grace than that.
“We were upset because they said they had known for weeks but didn’t tell us because a few of us had made it to Nationals and were still competing,” WSU sprinter Ashley Hollenbeck-Willems said.
The WSU track and field program has consistently produced national champions. While some of the program’s most decorated athletes were distance runners, four out of the five athletes to represent WSU at Nationals this past year were sprinters, comprising a 400-meter relay team.
One of those relay team members, Mason Lawyer, set the WSU record in both the indoor and outdoor 200-meter dash this year and competed in the 100 and 200 at Nationals.
Days following WSU “limiting” his events and not renewing his coach’s contract, Lawyer is in the transfer portal.
He joins a slew of WSU athletes in the portal, including Hollenbeck-Willems and Lyons, who must cancel leases and figure out their next steps without the assistance of significant name, image and likeness deals or, for many track athletes, the benefit of full scholarships.
It also leaves three coaches and their families in a similar state of transition.
Coaches and pundits alike warned that Olympic sports could suffer drastically as schools attempt to reorder their budgets to prioritize revenue sharing.
Track and field was the first WSU sport affected. It almost certainly won’t be the last.
WSU, along with the rest of college athletics, is in uncharted waters.
Before any more programs drown at sea, the powers that be — college presidents and athletic directors, conference commissioners and TV executives — should come to terms with the weight of their actions and do everything they can to reverse course.
That won’t happen because TV executives are getting everything they want and everyone else is just trying to survive.
College sports may never be the same again and no one should be spinning it into a positive or spending any energy not attempting to fix what is clearly broken.
“This is never what college sports were meant to be,” Brooke Lyons said. “College sports are meant to build a spirit and community within the universities. Obviously, now we’re seeing it’s just kind of tearing them apart, and it’s lost its purpose. And I think people need to realize that quick, or else there’s going to be a lot more issues like this.”
Perhaps the powers that be in college athletics should start listening to the college athletes themselves.
Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2268, staylor@lmtribune.com, or on X or Instagram @Sam_C_Taylor.
