Swarthmore & Vassar

interesteddad
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:18:31 +0000

This general comment does not apply to Swarthmore or Haverford, since they’ve dropped their football programs. Perhaps they would have been more inclined to keep them, if CC football policies had been stricter.



I am quite confident in saying that the likelihood of playing multiple postseason games had absolutely nothing to do with Swarthmore’s decision to drop football eight years ago!

The decision was recruiting slot based. They felt that to have a competitive football team required more than ten percent of all male freshmen to be football players. That number was so high that it was incompatible with the need for recruiting slots for other sports and for the College’s diversity goals.

The decision appears to be paying some dividends through stronger recruiting in the other sports. The men’s soccer team just beat Johns Hopkins for Swarthmore’s first men’s conference championship since football in 1984.

After two wins in the NCAA tournament hosted at Swarthmore this weekend, the team moves on to the Sweet 16 round.

This program has been on the rise for several years and seems to be a team that reflects Swarthmore’s diversity. Interestingly enough, the head coach has a team rule: a player cannot remain on the team if they join one of the two fraternities on campus.