KSU women’s lacrosse program to cost $200,000 in first year

David Romano, Taylor Kerns

Kent State’s upcoming women’s lacrosse program is estimated to cost about $200,000 in its first year, according to Director of Athletics Joel Nielsen. That figure is based on first-year expenses incurred by Central Michigan University in establishing its own women’s lacrosse team, whose budget for the 2016-2017 season was $175,000.

“Central Michigan did a nice roll-out with their program and so we’re kind of working off their model and the first couple years,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen said the program will increase in cost over the next several years as more scholarships are offered. Three scholarships will be available in the program’s first year, which begins in the Fall 2018 semester.

For the fiscal year 2016, University of Cincinnati’s women’s lacrosse program cost about $737,000

For the fiscal year 2016, University of Cincinnati’s women’s lacrosse program cost about $737,000.

“It’s around 12 full scholarships, so we’ll build up to that,” Nielsen said. “Our intention is to go three or so every year to build up to that 12, and so that’ll also increase the budget as we move it along.” Nielsen anticipates the annual budget for the women’s lacrosse program will eventually be similar to those of other Olympic sports teams at Kent State, which are about $500,000 per team.

While 12 is the maximum number of scholarships allowed for women’s lacrosse teams by the NCAA, Nielsen said that women’s lacrosse will be an equivalency sport, meaning 12 full scholarships that will be available for players can be divided into partial scholarships. Deputy Athletics Director of Internal Operations Janet Kittell said those scholarships are likely to be divided among 30 or so players. She said the team will probably also feature plenty of walk-ons, especially in its early years.

“I would say 90 percent of the team in the first couple of years will have to be walk-ons, and we would welcome walk-ons,” Kittell said. “There are probably people on campus, whether in the club sport or not, whether they’re going to be coming in this fall or not, that have experience that might want to be involved and we would love to have them try out.”

As for the source of the funding for the team, “it’s still undetermined right now,” Nielsen said

As for the source of the funding for the team, “it’s still undetermined right now,” Nielsen said.

“We’re going to have to develop some new funding models to make sure that we can get this one off the ground and properly funded so that they have a chance to compete and flourish,” he said.

Nielsen added that there currently aren’t plans to increase tuition or student fees to fund the program.

“Students are very generous in assisting the athletic department as they have for years through student fees,” he said, “and we have no intention to go for additional student fees or additional funding from students.”

Women’s lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in both high school and college, according to US Lacrosse, with about a 30% increase in schools at both levels sponsoring the sport between 2010 and 2015. The announcement of Kent State’s program has already spurred interest from prospective student-athletes, according to Nielsen. There have been multiple unofficial campus visits from female high school students who currently play lacrosse, he said.

The Mid-American Conference in which the majority of Kent State’s teams compete doesn’t sponsor lacrosse. Nielsen and Kittell both said that Kent’s women’s lacrosse team will likely compete in the Atlantic Sun Conference, which primarily features teams in the southeastern United States.

Nielsen said that because of how far away most other teams in the conference are, Kent’s team will play many games outside of its own conference.

[pullquote]Like a lot of our sports, we’ll attempt to play as many regional opponents as we can in the non-conference[/pullquote]

“Like a lot of our sports, we’ll attempt to play as many regional opponents as we can in the non-conference and we’re fortunate in the state of Ohio, we have a lot of Division Is around in Ohio and Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana,” Nielsen said, “so we have the ability to jump in a bus and play a lot of games in the majority of our sports.”

Nielsen said that the search for a head coach will begin in the spring, and Kittell said assistant coaches will likely be hired in the next couple of years.

“The process is well under way even though we don’t have a coach or a program yet,” Nielsen said. “Once we do name a coach and get a coach on board, it’ll go very quickly.”