UPDATE BELOW!!!!Link to Sign the Petition: https://www.change.org/p/oppose-the-immediate-elimination-of-the-mount-holyoke-tennis-program On today’s Conversations with Seven Sisters we have a special edition of the podcast where Jen speaks with members of the Mount Holyoke Tennis Team to discuss their team being cut without prior notice by the administration.
UPDATE! On the 21st of May the tennis team and our parents were offered a follow up meeting with our President, Dean of Students and Athletic Director. To begin this meeting, President Holley went through a list of points she wanted to dispute that she had been told from either faculty, alums and others who had written to her. She wanted to clarify that the decision had not been rash, Eric Cestero was apparently notified individually but the call was not received (we still believe that more effort could have been made), she did take into account the damage that would be caused to student-athletes which is why the smallest team was sacrificed.After this, the team began to discuss our request for 2 more years. We were told this is not possible, as she has already begun putting our $400,000 into other programs. We requested that we fundraise ourselves and only raise enough money for us to be able to play our NEWMAC matches for the next two years, or even one if that is all we can bargain for at the moment. This request was not taken seriously as they do not believe there is any way we can raise this money. However, based on all of the recent support we have received, we believe that this is certainly a possibility. Also, we were told that the $400,000 would not change, even if we only play an extremely minimized season. We found this to be quite counterintuitive and the details of how $400,000 has been calculated were not shared with us. Hopefully, when a similar meeting happens that has been promised with our alums it may be more transparent.
Our Athletic Director and President then also brought up the issue of our outdoor courts. They are not deemed playable by NEWMAC and require 3 million in order to be resurfaced. We explained that, like with our most recent season, we can either ask other schools to play on our incredible indoor courts or we use Amherst or Smith’s courts if outdoor play is required. To this, they replied that this would be complicated as other school’s Athletic Directors must also be in agreement and not just the coaches. We have already been in discussion with other NEWMAC coaches and they would be more than willing to compromise, if this is what will allow us to stay alive. Our President nor our AD had a convincing argument as to why this should not be a viable option.
Finally, they attacked our small roster size. Given our slightly smaller than average DIII tennis team, we performed well both on and off the court. Our President brought up the issue of our match against MIT during the season, where we were forced to forfeit two matches due to two of our players being unable to play. In Coach Aldo Santiago’s 31 years, this has never happened! As you can agree, this hardly seems like fair justification for our team’s sudden and cruel termination.
Our AD then said that NEWMAC had complained that due to us not bringing a full roster, it meant that some MIT players may not have been able to receive all-conference honors. However, the NEWMAC fixed that situation immediately and they were honored. Our athletic director really narrowed in on this particular event however one of our players, Kirat Kaur, received this award this season. She is the first one to receive this honor from MHC since 2018, which just further shows how much more successful our team is. Additionally, the MHC Athlete who received this award in 2018 was also a member of the tennis team. Mount Holyoke did not mention this or