PULLMAN, Wash. – Laura Lindquist started her journey at Washington State as a walk-on athlete into the track and field program and worked her way up to become a senior leader on the team, earning a full-ride scholarship and etching her name in WSU history books along the way.
An underdog story like that is becoming few and far between with the rapidly-evolving college sports landscape and the recent NCAA revenue sharing settlement. The ruling essentially allows schools to pay their athletes, not exceeding a $20.5 million cap this upcoming year.
That sounds great – right?
For the football and men’s basketball programs, maybe. But for Olympic sports, it’s could actually be threatening. At least, in WSU’s case.
On Monday, WSU athletics leadership announced the ‘field events’ portion of the track and field program will be cut. The release from WSU athletics states throwers and jumpers are cut, while sprinters and hurdlers are limited. However, Lindquist told us there’s might be more to the story.
“The sprints group came out and said they aren’t [limited]. They got rid of the sprints coach too,” said Lindquist.
The cuts are what Lindquist detailed as a blindside, but not a surprise.
Throughout the last year, Lindquist said the coaching staff would disagree on where to put their scholarship money and who to recruit. Their head coach ultimately would decide to put more resources towards the distance athletes.
“We have throwers that would hit marks that would get them to NCAA finals and that were well-deserving of scholarships, and the head coach was like ‘I’m not giving you money. I’m giving it to a distance kid’,” Lindquist said.
She also said that spring meets were different than her prior seasons because the team would only travel the distance athletes. But even though there might have been “favoritism” towards a certain group on the team, Lindquist said she never expected for the school to cut this many athletes in the program.
“It’s so disappointing. I was a leader on this team and I’m telling [recruits] to come here… and now it seems like I just lied to their face, but I had no idea.”
Questions swirled throughout the team after their zoom call with athletics leadership that provided no explanation as to why half the team would be cut immediately and with no warning.
Athletes with eligibility remaining can stay at Washington State as a student and keep their scholarship without participating in athletics, or they can transfer to a different school. Lindquist just graduated from WSU so isn’t looking to go somewhere else, but she says her teammates might not have the easiest time finding somewhere that has a spot for them.
“Everyone’s doing roster limits,” said Lindquist. “All of these people going to the portal, like you’re screwed if you’re not the top of the top.”
Lindquist says underdog stories like hers, going from walk-on to record-holder, won’t be stories anymore. If you’re not coming in as a top athlete – you won’t be given a chance to prove yourself.
In other recent college cuts: UTEP has cut their tennis program, Cal Poly has cut their swim and dive team and GCU cut men’s volleyball.
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