Women’s Gymnastics, Women’s Swimming and Women’s Volleyball will continue as Division I varsity sports. They were originally slated to transition to club status after the 2020-21 academic year but will continue without interruption except any due to COVID-19.

The university received notice of intent to sue on the grounds that the announced plan, including the cuts and the associated roster adjustments in other sports, did not in fact meet Title IX standards. After a detailed review, Interim Director of Athletics Jeremy Martin concluded that the anticipated roster adjustments would not attain equity in participation by next fall, and to achieve decisive progress more swiftly, the three women’s sports would need to be restored.

This decision will make significant progress toward attaining equity in participation. Athletics will pursue a robust process for completing a gender equity strategic plan this academic year, creating opportunities for input from all members of the W&M community who wish to engage. That plan will ensure Title IX compliance during the 2022-23 academic year, if not sooner, and beyond.

William & Mary will make significant progress toward achieving equity in participation in 2021-22. Completing that progress will require reduction in the men’s program via roster management and retaining the current cuts to the men’s teams, or a swift and significant increase in participation opportunities for women, or both. 

As a result of today’s announcement and decision, there is no clear and easy pathway to reinstate the four suspended men’s programs immediately, while making significant progress toward gender proportionality within the department. However, the university remains committed swiftly to continuing conversations with those affected programs, to look at every viable alternative before making a final decision for the near term. 

Interim AD Jeremy Martin said: “We recognize the very substantial challenge but are committed to engaging those who bring substantive solutions. Consistent with our phased approach to decision making under COVID-19, we will move swiftly to lay out the challenge and arrive at a decision for the 2021-2022 academic year.”

We take seriously our obligation to ensure that donors know their funds are used appropriately. When someone new takes a top leadership position at a university, it is a frequent practice for a financial audit to be conducted in the area that they will lead. That process will happen this year for W&M Athletics, led as usual by the university’s independent, internal auditor. He will look specifically at the use of endowed gifts and other restricted funds.

Tribe 2025 is a living document, designed to adapt in response to dynamic circumstances. It outlines William & Mary’s commitments to gender equity, financial stability and Division I excellence – including increasing support for athletes and coaches, and increasing scholarships to advance social mobility – among other important goals. These goals must guide W&M Athletics over the coming years and be incorporated into every solution brought forward.

That said, many elements remain to be refined and resolved. That includes the gender equity strategic plan that Tribe 2025 called for, that William & Mary has committed to completing this year. Significant financial challenges remain, and will continue to become more acute under pandemic. Interim Director Jeremy Martin will be sharing his process for reaching sustainability over the coming weeks. That will include establishing financial goals for each sport in the program, going forward. Finally, core questions of how William & Mary should approach excellence in athletics, raised in Tribe 2025, require fuller conversations, as President Rowe has identified. Interim Director Martin is developing a schedule of engagements to dig further into those questions this fall.

He will become interim director of athletics effective immediately.

As President Rowe's statement says, "Athletics Director Samantha Huge was asked to lead difficult change at William & Mary – change required to address long-standing imbalances and put the athletics department on sound financial and operational footing for years to come. She took on that challenge recognizing that it was in the best interest of the university and she continues to make decisions using that standard as her guide. 

Now it is clear to me that a new approach is necessary. Accordingly, Director Huge and I have mutually agreed that it is best to part ways so the university can focus on the critical questions facing W&M Athletics. I accept this step with a heavy heart and with great respect for Samantha Huge and her leadership."

W&M Chief of Staff Jeremy P. Martin Ph.D. '12, M.B.A. '17 will lead W&M Athletics in the interim. He has served in the president's office since 2009, including roles as associate provost and assistant to the president. He became chief of staff in 2019. Martin graduated magna cum laude in 2001 from Houghton College in Houghton, N.Y., with a bachelor's degree in business administration and communication. He also holds a master's degree in sports administration. In addition to his Ph.D., Martin received his MBA from William & Mary in 2017. Martin's career began in intercollegiate athletics as an assistant women's basketball coach and assistant sports information director at Emory University. While pursuing his doctorate at William & Mary, he was a graduate assistant for academic support services in W&M Athletics and continued to work with the department on behalf of the president's office. Martin served as liaison to the university's Committee on Competitive Excellence in 2015.

The most direct way for institutions to establish compliance with Title IX is to ensure that the number of opportunities for women to participate in athletics is substantially proportionate to the number of participation opportunities offered to men.   According to guidance from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR), substantial proportionality is determined in comparison to the rate of undergraduate enrollment.  This means that if an institution's student body is 50% women, then OCR would expect that roughly half of its athletic participation opportunities would be available to women, although the application of that standard can vary depending on the size of the athletic program.  

Roster management is the act of carefully monitoring roster composition to remain in an acceptable range of our roster sizes per team and as a department to ensure proper support services and experiences are maintained.

William & Mary annually reports the roster size of each of our teams to the NCAA through the Sports Sponsorship and Demographics Report and to the Department of Education in compliance with the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act.  

Roster sizes are determined by both an external and internal analysis. Externally, roster sizes are compared to the levels reported nationally, regionally, as well as at the conference level.  Internally, we look at capacities associated with the following: coaching, facility (e.g., locker rooms), financial (both scholarships and operational), and support services (e.g., sports medicine, strength & conditioning, academics, sports psychology). Lastly, coaching preferences, as they relate to different styles of play, philosophies, and team structure are also taken into consideration. 

Roster sizes are fluid in nature and are dependent upon both the needs of the programs as well as the resources available for each team.  It is expected that there will be some ebb and flow of these numbers due to many different reasons.  For example, a student-athlete who redshirts a season and elects to remain at William & Mary for their master's program may result in an increase in a roster size for a year, as the recruiting process begins early in a high school career, and become final during the prospect's senior year in high school. 

Title IX was one of the many factors that went into this decision, as listed in our Open Letter to the Community, though not the sole factor.