With all the athletic opportunities SNHU has to offer, how would the university support a future swim team?
“All sports are supported by a university budget, just as many different areas on campus are supported,” said Anthony Fallacaro, Director of Athletics and Recreation, when asked about how SNHU would pay for a team. “We do offset some of the costs with alumni donations to athletics and revenue from the rental of athletic facilities.”
If funding was received for the budget, the university would have to recruit coaches and players for the team.
“Any time we do a search for a head coach, we conduct a national search. We would post the position through many of the outlets that support athletic searches, such as the NCAA career page. The athletic administration, along with human resources, reviews those and selects roughly 10-12 candidates for phone interviews. Following those, we would narrow the search to about five for on-campus interviews. From there we would make our selection. Once the head coach is selected they would conduct searches for their assistant coach roles,” said Fallacaro.
Once the university has a coaching staff, they would then begin searching for athlete recruits.
The future team would be instructed to follow the NCAA obligations and rules which include Title IX policies. This would ensure an equal amount of spending opportunities would be offered for both male and female teams.
According to Fallacaro, “A club swim team has tried to get off the ground, but we did not see a great deal of participation in it, which would make starting a program like that a little more of a task. Currently, our pool is adequate for rentals and high school swim meets, but might need an upgrade to support a college swim program.”
According to NCAA standards, “For facilities (those with architectural plans dated after September 1, 1996), it is preferred that the racing course be 50 meters in length by 75 feet in width, providing for eight, 9-foot lanes with additional width outside lanes one and eight.” SNHU’s current pool only has six lanes, making it ineligible for NCAA competition.
There are many pieces that are needed to form a collegiate team which makes the tasks a drawn-out process. It is not impossible, but not likely for SNHU at the moment.
