Trigg County female athletes will have two new varsity sports options at Murray State in the near future. University Athletic Director Allen Ward announced a restructuring in the MSU Athletic Department that will open up several new opportunities to local female athletes. The first part of the restructuring is not so good as the women’s rowing program will be eliminated after this spring semester though the athletes scholarships will be honored for next year and the NCAA will allow these athletes to transfer without sitting out a year like normal transfer rules because the program they participate in is being eliminated from the university. The good news of this for the area is that starting in the 2009-2010 school year MSU will field a Women’s Softball team and begin a transition for the equestrian team from club sport at MSU to NCAA varsity status.

A firm commitment to continue progress toward Title IX compliance, coupled with pending university cost-containment initiatives, has caused Murray State University to reevaluate the sports it sponsors at the NCAA level.

 As a result, the University is announcing that the sport of Softball will be added to the varsity line-up, while the sport of Rowing will be discontinued.  Dr. Randy Dunn, President of Murray State, has also charged Director of Athletics Allen Ward with the responsibility of planning to move the sport of equestrian from club level to NCAA varsity status.   

“It is vitally important that we continue progressing toward proportionality while sustaining the level of athletic achievement everyone expects.  I project that adding the sports of softball and equestrian will allow Murray State to achieve proportionality,” said Director of Athletics Allen Ward. “At the same time, dealing with the budget cuts are a challenge and athletics will share in the responsibility of addressing these financial setbacks.”

“Therefore, we [the university and athletic administration] looked at this as an opportunity to fully evaluate the sports Murray State sponsors,” said Ward. “It was important that we address the annual budget in a manner that does not jeopardize the opportunity for competitive success across the board.   Our evaluation concluded that the sport of rowing does not ideally fit programmatically at the university, so we are choosing to replace it with sports that are more identifiable with the Murray State service region.”

For the rest of this story, read this week's Cadiz Record.