Students feel althetics should have more priority at SSU

JAKE RENTERIA STAFF WRITER

Sonoma State has put less and less priority towards athletics in the recent decade. Helping boost sports programs would help the overall school spirit. The removal of three sports on campus back in 2020 as a money saving move is a prime example of showing where the budget lands.

In April of 2020, the school announced they would be shutting down three of their sports programs, women’s water polo as well as men’s and women’s tennis. Eliminating these three teams saved the school $800,000. They announced that the money would go to investing back into the existing sports programs. “This was a difficult decision driven in no small part by the new financial realities facing our state, the CSU system and our university… as disappointing as this decision is, this leaves us in a better position going forward to support our existing athletic teams” said ex-President Judy Sakaki. They did not specify exactly who, what or where the money went to.

A point that is usually brought up when talking about athletics at SSU is the lack of a football team. Of course, that would boost school spirit as football games become tradition for students to attend.

Unfortunately for such a small school like SSU, having a football team is just not feasible. Football needs the largest budget of any sport to maintain, which is why few California State Universities have them. With SSU already cutting smaller programs, a football budget is out of the question. That’s not to mention the other obvious problem, there is no field for them to play on. Adding stands to the already outdated track and field that is present now would just be putting lipstick on a pig.

The sports that we do have, had success in the past or are experiencing that success right now. Despite that, students just don’t seem to rally around any one sport or event. Softball, baseball, basketball and soccer, the main draws on campus, just don’t seem to be enough to boost the school spirit. Being a small school definitely dampens the ability to support big time sports. SSU seems to put academics and arts over athletics, which is completely fine, but doesn’t contribute as much to school spirit.

When asked if he thought of Sonoma as a sports school, Junior Logan Petrusha said “It’s not, although it should be… the athletics scene is not very published and doesn’t have much hype.”

The Green Music Center, which was supposed to be entirely privately funded, ended up costing around 120 million dollars to build. According to an article from The Press Democrat in 2020, this drew criticism from some people within the faculty saying that the school was too focused on arts. Also mentioning that the building of this huge project took focus from developing other aspects. That whole deal can point to a lack of focus on athletics. We have a beautiful state of the art music center and a baseball field with rotting seats.

Track and field is stuck with a completely outdated track that isn’t even fit to host events. Games get rained out for sports, as SSU doesn’t seem to want to budget for any turf fields or install lights for night games. Many of these examples can leave an underwhelming feel to some sports events at SSU.

With all the renovations to classrooms in the recent years, the athletics community at SSU should benefit from the same level of focus and budgeting.