HBCU athletics has been on an impressive run, with multiple institutions adding new programs and making history in the progress.
Schools like Morgan State added acrobatics and tumbling and men’s wrestling, Fisk added women’s gymnastics, Tennessee State added men’s ice hockey, Delaware State added women’s wrestling and many others launched sports HBCUs aren’t traditionally recognized for.
The biggest challenge facing these programs is funding, as they are expensive sports to launch and maintain.
While the aforementioned programs have been fortunate to receive the necessary funding and support, including Tennessee State which is going through financial difficulties yet is still all in on Daunte Abercrombie’s mission to launch and build the first HBCU ice program program in history, some aren’t as fortunate.
One of those schools is Talladega College in Alabama.
In 2023, the school added gymnastics, becoming the second HBCU, behind Fisk, to field a women’s gymnastics program.
A year later, it was shut down.
It was a hard decision said Interim President Walter Kimbrough, but the only one that made financial sense.
“So when you add those things and you have to add athletic and academic scholarships, it didn’t make a lot of sense,” Kimbrough said in an interview with AL.com.
For a small school like Talladega, non-revenue generating sports are challenging to maintain, and gymnastics, despite being launched with the help of Brown Girls Do Gymnastics and HBCU Gymnastics Alliance and the support of former college president Gregory J. Vincent had an estimated price tag of $500,000 associated with it but lacked a corresponding revenue figure.
Unfortunately, gymnastics wasn’t the only victim of Talladega’s cash crunch as men’s volleyball, acrobatics and tumbling, men’s and women’s golf and men’s and women’s indoor track programs were all axed as well.
The financial crisis appeared to be poor financial planning, as salaries increased while enrollment declined 24% over the past three years.
While some savings were made after employment contracts were cut, more hard decisions had to be made, and that’s when Kimbrough had to take aim at the other sports programs which, in hindsight, should never have been launched due to the financial constraints the school faced.
“The decision to establish these programs was made in the spirit of fostering a diverse and inclusive athletic environment,” said school administrators in a release. “However, early on, such studies would have revealed that these programs were not sustainable under present institutional conditions.”
As of 2022, Talladega College, a private institution in rural Alabama had an enrollment of a little over 800 students. The student body consists of mostly low-income students and 70% receive Pell Grants.
This is another reason why Kimbrough, who wrote an op-ed about his decisions, acted so swiftly and surgically.
