The top story for the Coast Report's Sept. 9 issue is "Coast axes intersession offers" and talks about Orange Coast College cutting intersession to allocate funds elsewhere.This will affect OCC's women's basketball program more than other Coast sports since basketball is the only one that plays both fall and spring.
"Usually half our team takes intersession classes so the kids that are sophomores, they expected to have an opportunity to pick up a transferable class in the intersession, but that's not there," head coach Mike Thornton said.
But even for the fall semester, many sophomores might have to go to OCC one more year because they have trouble getting into classes required for transfering.
"There are a couple classes...one's a chemistry class, I think, and there are only one or two of those classes offered," Thornton said. "Even though they had an early registration appointment, they didn't get in."
Thornton added the team relied on donations for their Rebounder's Club and advertisements for team media guides.
The school printed out a couple hundred guides and any excess copies were to come out of the donations and advertisements. But that's not the case this year.
"The only way (budget cuts) have affected it is we have to pay for all the printing," Thornton said.
The budget cuts have hurt the lady Pirates on the court too.
"We had to cut back four games from our schedule, from 28 games to 24 games," he said.
Thornton's team will play in five tournaments this year to try to make up the lost games. If the lady Pirates play in the maximum amount of games possible at the tournaments, they will play more than 28 games.
Budget cuts have affected other Coast teams similarly also and this is just one example
During the summer, Coast's Communications Director Jeff Hobbs said “I don’t think the programs themselves are going to see any drastic cuts as of now, but that could change."
Well, at least they didn't axe one of the 21 sports program instead, but if how the women's basketball team is affected is a foreshadowing of things to come, I have a feeling I might be reporting a bigger story sooner than later.
[Photo courtesy of CartoonStock.com]
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