Lack of sports diversity hampers recruitment at small colleges

By Henson White Columnist

Sports are an integral component of a majority of colleges. In fact, most every school has some sort of sports program.

However, only the bigger state schools will have “all” of the big sports, especially after the onset of Title IX, which was a measure to give better equality to women’s athletics.

Many schools cut their “worse” sports. This also affected HBCUs as many, including Bethune-Cookman, cut out some of their smaller sport offering.

A good example of the lack of sports diversity in HBCU schools is the lack of collegiate/folk style wrestling programs.

In folk style wrestling one wrestler tries to physically control the opponent against their will without injuring them. The goal is to get behind the opponent's back and arms, force them down to the mat, turn them over onto their back, and pin them. This style is known as the more traditional style of wrestling in the United States and is similar to freestyle wrestling, according to Sportslingo.com.

I wrestled all my years in high school and thoroughly enjoyed it. And when I went to look for schools that had any sort of wrestling programs and was sad to see that there are barely any south of the Appalachia mountains, espe- cially when you are looking for HBCUs with any form of program.

Currently, the only school with a Division I wrestling program is Morgan State University in Baltimore. Every other school with any form of a program only has a club, including Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. Due to classification reasons, FAMU wrestling doesn't provide athletic scholarships, but that hasn't stopped prospective athletes from pursuing their passion for the sport, according to the FAMUAN newspaper. The team boasts an impressive combined 13 NCWA All Americans both male and female along with one national champion, the newspaper said.

Meanwhile, the lack of specific sports means there is a gap in what certain schools can offer students for scholarships. This causes students who wish to go to an HBCU but want to go on a scholarship unable to go.

Besides Title IX, lack of funds is another reason why some school administrators s find that they are unable to offer team sports. Costs to start and maintain teams can be tremendous. So, until certain schools can secure funding, we will unlikely see a boon in smaller sports being offered at smaller schools.

Sports writer Henson White is a senior mass communications major.

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