Coach Doug Chapman dismayed over women's tennis getting the ax at UMD

It’s already been a roller-coaster summer for Doug Chapman.

A week after learning he had been selected as the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association’s boys’ tennis coach for the year for 2019-2020, the Somerset resident on Wednesday learned that his women’s tennis team was one of eight programs eliminated from UMass Dartmouth athletics.

Chapman had coached UMD women’s tennis for the last seven seasons.

“The players are crushed; they are hurting,” Chapman said in a Facebook message. “From the five returning seniors to the eight incoming freshmen, and everyone in between. What started as shock and dismay has turned into anger and a sense of betrayal.”

The Somerset Berkley Regional (previously Somerset High School) boys’ tennis coach for the last 41 years, Chapman said UMD athletics had told its coaches at a preseason meeting last August (women’s tennis plays in the fall) that the school had too many teams for its enrollment and that cuts were a possibility.

He said he neither heard nor read anything further on the subject until he was copied on a Wednesday school email to student-athletes. He said he had received a voice message 10 minutes before the email but he had missed it.

The cuts reduce UMD’s athletics program to 17 teams. The ousted programs also include men’s tennis, women’s equestrian, men’s golf, men’s lacrosse, co-ed sailing, and men’s and women’s swimming and diving.

UMD, in a press release, described the elimination of the eight sports as part of a resources re-allocation, not as a cost cut. It said the decisions to cut the eight sports came after multiple athletics departments reviews over the last decade. The reviews, it said, “analyzed major aspects of the current Department of Athletics & Recreation structure, including available resources, gender equity, enrollment, full-time/part-time coaches, sports sponsorship trends, facilities, as well as strengths and weaknesses of programs.”

Chapman described the rationale for choosing which sports to eliminate as vague and asks if there was an actual formula used. “Because however we look at it,” he said, “we can't understand how it includes us.”

Jim Seavey, UMD's Director of Athletic Communications, said the school's sport-cutting decisions "did not have to do with competitiveness in any way, (or) academics."

Women’s tennis, Chapman said, ranks high among UMD teams in terms of program success, academic achievement of its athletes, and community service. He said it is also one of the least expensive sports to run.

Over the last five years, he said, UMD athletics as a whole has won two Little East Conference championships: men’s indoor track and field and women’s tennis. And women's tennis, he said, has been “one of the most successful teams in competition, year-in and year-out.” He said that in the 12 years the LEC has hosted a women’s tennis tournament, UMD has made it to 11 semifinals and won twice, while twice qualifying for the NCAA Division 3 playoffs. “A number of failing programs did not get the chop. So it can't be for competitive reasons,” he said.

Academically, he said, the 2019 team last fall led LEC women’s tennis and all UMD teams in academic all-stars, with 11 of its 13 athletes qualifying. He said the Corsairs are going to be named an Intercollegiate Tennis Association National Scholar-Athlete Team, with eight individual ITA selections, and that UMD the previous year led the LEC with six ITA selections.

In terms of community service, he said his Corsairs have hosted wheelchair players and hosted a Juvenile Myositis awareness event.

“I understand that the school believes it can have a stronger athletic department with fewer teams sharing resources,” Chapman said. “But how does cutting one of your most successful programs, that has the best tennis facility in the conference and is one of the least expensive to run, accomplish that goal? We are the very type of program that you keep to strengthen athletics.”

Email Greg Sullivan at gsullivan@heraldnews.com. Follow him @GregSullivanHN.