Columnist Dean Juipe: UNLV needs to reassure Reitz, Barto

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, May 6, 1998 | 8:16 a.m.

THE HAMMER came down Tuesday afternoon at New Mexico State, where two long-standing men's athletic programs -- track and swimming -- were dropped as the result of the university attempting to fully comply with gender-equity mandates.

Rather than add two women's sports to meet with Title IX requirements, NMSU deleted two men's programs instead.

"The coward's way out," said UNLV men's swimming coach Jim Reitz, who, for the sake of relevancy, had his program mentioned in a Las Vegas periodical as a candidate for the chopping block. Also cited: men's soccer.

"That's news to me," said soccer coach Barry Barto, discounting the report. Like Reitz, he feels his program has sufficient merit to survive the double whammy of an athletic department supposedly in financial turmoil as well as the demands of Title IX.

"It's a complex issue," Barto said. "No one really has a full feeling of what gender equity is. Is it dollars? Is it numbers? Is it staffing? Just what is equity?

"But I have to think the athletic department is happy with us. I think we'll be able to ride out whatever storm we may have to."

Of course track and swimming coaches at New Mexico State may have felt the same way. Yet today they're out of work and the young men in their programs or maybe dreaming of participating in their programs will now have to look elsewhere to fulfill their competitive desires.

This is wrong. Deleting a men's program to satisfy gender-equity needs is a non-solution in that it adds nothing and benefits no one in a university setting.

UNLV, however, has some experience in this area, having dropped its (men's) wrestling program in 1980 when gender equity was just emerging as an unavoidable issue.

While it seems unlikely the school would disband its men's soccer and swimming programs, it's apparent someone in an administrative capacity has at least given it some thought. And no one has stepped forward to reassure Reitz or Barto.

"The threat of it happening has a presence for every non-revenue sport in America," Reitz said. "Men's swimming is a sport that has been dropped by a lot of schools looking for the easy way out.

"But I think there has been enough backlash that it has slowed down. It doesn't seem to be happening as often now as it was a few years ago."

Reitz cites the University of Houston as an example of a school that dropped men's swimming only to see its women's swimming program plummet off the deep end.

"Houston had successful men's and women's teams but dropped the men," he said. "The women's team has never been the same."

UNLV is adding women's soccer this fall and may add women's golf next year to meet NCAA gender-equity demands. But until the latter program is formally announced, quality coaches like Reitz and Barto may feel as if the Sword of Damacles sways figuratively overhead.

They shouldn't have this burden. If a school can spontaneously raise an assistant basketball coach's salary from $73,000 to $100,000 -- as UNLV did this week with Glynn Cyprien -- it can afford to keep the rest of its house in order.