Five teams will no longer represent UC Berkeley as intercollegiate sports starting at the end of the academic year as part of the effort to help sustain the financially-troubled campus Department of Intercollegiate Athletics.
Men’s rugby, men’s baseball, men’s and women’s gymnastics and women’s lacrosse will be eliminated from the department’s intercollegiate roster, according to the letter written by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and released to students, faculty, staff and Cal supporters today.
Though rugby will no longer be an identified as an intercollegiate sport by the department, its status as a club team will allow it to compete both nationally and internationally and maintain the same caliber of success as it has in the past, though a definite plan has yet to be created as to how to implement this transition, according to the letter.
“Across the country at everywhere but Cal, men’s rugby competes at an elite level as a club sport,” he said in the letter. “For Cal men’s rugby, which was a club sport for many years up until the early 1990s, we anticipate a new tier of ‘varsity club.'”
The campus will honor existing scholarship commitments for those student athletes whose teams have been eliminated, and the campus will support students wishing to transfer to other schools to compete.
Read the full story at the Daily Californian.
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