For more than five years, Zachary Kjeldsen worked as a high school lacrosse coach in Miami. He sent plenty of kids to college programs but had never played at that level himself, or even graduated from a four-year college. So when Kjeldsen completed his associate degree at Miami-Dade College, he decided he had to give it a shot.

“I sent enough students to college,” says Kjeldsen, now 29, “so I figured I’d go myself.”

Researching schools with NCAA Division II lacrosse programs, Kjeldsen came across the University of the District of Columbia, which in recent years has struggled to attract residents of the District, let alone students who live in Miami. Even for its division, the university wasn’t a lacrosse powerhouse; in fact, it was in the early stages of launching men’s and women’s teams, having just hired coach Scott Urick, a former Georgetown lacrosse player and assistant coach. Kjeldsen met with college lacrosse coaches from all over, but said that when he met with Urick, he became convinced that UDC was the right fit. He wanted to be part of something new.

“Within five minutes I was sold,” Kjeldsen says. “I liked his philosophy: Quality people make quality players.”

Last fall, Kjeldsen enrolled as a junior at UDC and began practicing with the team, months before the start of the season. But in November, he learned that the team’s first season might also be one of its last.

That month, the university’s interim president, James Lyons Sr., presented hisVision 2020 plan, a proposal to “right-size” the university in the face of shrinking enrollment and flagging funds. Among its measures, the plan would have phased out by 2018 the entire athletic department, which was hemorrhaging millions of dollars each year. The proposal followed the D.C. Council’s May 2012 demand that UDC make significant budgetary changes. In 2012, according to the Vision 2020 plan, the university spent more than $32,000 per student—a figure that’s about 55 percent higher than at comparable public institutions. The plan proposes to bring that figure down to $30,723 in 2020.

Students who come to UDC to play sports would be out of luck. “That was my drive coming here,” Kjelsden says. “I wanted to play.” Why else would a guy from Miami come to UDC?

The University of the District of Columbia Firebirds don’t get much attention in D.C., especially compared to the Division I programs at Georgetown University and George Washington University. But the prospect of the nation’s capital losing the sports program at its only public university was enough of a shock to make headlines in the Washington Post and education blogs, which largely weighed the merits of cutting the athletic program versus academic majors. In addition to the sports department, Lyons proposed slashing 23 academic programs with low enrollment numbers.

At the time, Lyons told the Post that he wasn’t being anti-athletic, just doing what was best for the entire university. He wrote in his Vision2020 proposal that decreasing enrollment numbers help take a large toll on the university’s finances, bringing it close to defaulting on its debts. Cutting staff and slashing underenrolled programs, he argued, would allow UDC to strengthen the programs that it still offered. In place of the NCAA athletic program, he proposed investing $1 million in a campuswide health and wellness initiative. “The University can no longer attempt to be all things to all people,” he wrote.

Students and faculty rallied against the cuts. The university hosted four public forums; Donnel Jones, the student body president and walk-on lacrosse player, says he helped encourage students to speak out against the plans. He also helped organize a packed rally in the university’s main plaza before the board voted on the proposals. The Firebirds, he says, are an integral part of student life on the largely commuter campus, giving students “something to look forward to” and a reason to stay in Van Ness outside of classes.

The proposals to cut the majors and the athletic program “came out of nowhere from the students’ perspective,” Jones says. “We had rallies, student surveys, town halls, you name it…We made sure students spoke up.”

And, in part, it worked. While the Board of Trustees voted to axe 17 majors, including sociology, economics, history, and physics, it initially delayed a decision to disband the athletic program and eventually dropped the idea altogether. On Feb. 18, the Vision 2020 plan passed, sans athletic cuts.

“Based on the Board action intercollegiate athletics continues at the University of the District of Columbia and there is no pending action to discontinue this program,” university spokesman Michael Rogers writes in an email.

The news was a relief for student-athletes like Jones and Kjelsden, but it also meant that the school had to look elsewhere to find $16 million of cuts or revenue over five years. Continue reading