Friday, June 18, 2010

FAMU coaches adapting to cuts

Florida A&M's Volleyball Coach Tony Trifonov has dominated the MEAC with nine consecutive Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Volleyball Championships. He has one of the smallest recruiting budgets in all of NCAA Division I, but the Lady Rattlers annually participate in the NCAA Tournament against teams with budgets at least one-hundred times greater.


While the two revenue-generating sports — football and basketball — have been able to weather the financial storm hovering over Florida A&M and stay in the recruiting hunt with their mid-major counterparts, coaches of Olympic sports have been finding ways to keep their programs competitive. From bowling to swimming, navigating the recruiting landscape could be a little bit of a landmine without enough full scholarships. But somehow bowling, tennis, softball and volleyball have done well enough to make it to the postseason in the face of cuts over the past three years.

Even men's and women's track have been able to get a handful of athletes into the NCAA regionals this past season, despite finishing in the bottom half of the standings at their conference meet. With that kind of success, there's a renewed emphasis to give more to non-revenue sports, said interim athletic director Mike Smith. "It ignites us to continue to look for ways to get them resources to enhance their recruiting effort to get the kind of athletes that we need," Smith said. "We are putting our efforts to give our coaches an opportunity to get out and recruit. They're doing a good job in looking at student-athletes that will bring success to the program.

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