Jack Quinn, President at Erie Community College, recently decided to eliminate eight long established sports programs at the school in what’s widely being regarded as a detested move that threatens to send a large number of the school’s athletes scrambling to find new institutions to play for.

The eight sports soon to be eliminated are men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track, cross country and golf.

Quinn became the school’s tenth president in April 2008.  In less than two years the former Congressman is undeniably leaving his mark. Unfortunately it’s one that has numerous student-athletes among others raving mad.

These cuts, which become effective in the 2010-11 school year, make absolutely no sense at all, according to an ECC team head coach I spoke to. The eight combined sports eliminated account for just a little over $40 thousand dollars, according to a US Department of Education website.

The same website shows that E.C.C. spent $1.837 million dollars on athletics during the 2008-09 season.

“If you do the math that accounts for just 0.22 percent of the money spent on sports,” he told me. “If these sports were floundering, it would be one thing, but that is not the case.”

The women’s track and field team is ranked seventh in the latest NJCAA National Poll and the men’s team is ranked tenth.

The men’s golf team is currently one of the top teams in a large and very competitive region.  They currently have two players among the top 15 in the region. Just this weekend the team smashed its school record for lowest team score at the Tompkins-Cortland Invitational at Elm Tree Golf Course in Cortland

The men’s cross country team just finished fourth this past season at the NJCAA National meet, tied for the programs best-ever finish.

Despite the eight sports combining for a miniscule amount of the school’s overall sports operating budget, not to mention angry protests from students, Quinn reportedly remains adamant the cuts will happen and hinted more may be on the horizon.

“We may continue to look at more of our sports programs,” Quinn told the Buffalo News last week. “We’re looking at everything.”

The same E.C.C. coach tells me Quinn is far from concerned about how the school’s sports programs perform. Apparently Quinn claimed he was happy with the school being average on the sports field.

“Since when do we strive to be average?” the coach said. “Do we tell our kids to go to school today and be average? Of course we don’t.”

Quinn didn’t do himself any favors recently by inaccurately claiming the programs being cut from the budget were individual rather than team sports.   According to published reports, Quinn argued that “runners can still run on their own and golfers can golf on their own.”

“The last time I checked they were team sports.” the coach said.  “This embarrassing mistake shows that the school’s own athletic administrators were never consulted during Quinn’s analysis. “

In a time of economic struggle in the State of New York, we all understand aide is being cut to the school.  However, these sports teams are funded almost exclusively by the kids themselves via their Student Activities fees.

To make matters worse, a source tells me their student activities fees are being raised by $ 25.00 next year.

That’s $ 250,000 in extra revenue paid by the students for these teams.

If half of these student-athletes do not return to ECC because of these sports program cuts, that’s over $75,000 in lost tuition—and I’m told that is a very low estimate.

At least one student-athlete has gone all the record as saying she’s going to transfer out.

Now that they’ve cut the program, I’m actually going to transfer out to another school and possibly run for them.” Renee Valentino said.

A consultant was brought in to look at the department, but my source tells me a report produced has not been made available to anyone, including high-ranking members of the school administration.  It has also been denied to Erie County officials who have requested to view it.

If this is indeed true, I’m sure this report was tax-payer funded and it should be available for the public to view.

“Quinn is a lifelong Politician who was handed a job at a college when he retired from his political career,” the source told me.  “He does not have the insight to see that these cuts are wrong and even after being told by numerous informed people, he still refuses to look elsewhere to save money.”