Good morning, and welcome to Friday, June 9. Today’s Briefing was written by Rick Seltzer, with contributions from Julia Piper. Write to me: rick.seltzer@chronicle.com.
Opportunity strikes in western New York
The fate of one small athletic program at a closing college in western New York says a lot about market conditions and available strategies for small private colleges.
Niagara University is adding a new Division I women’s bowling program, with coaches and players from the shuttering Medaille University, in nearby Buffalo. Niagara hired two coaches from Medaille and expects to enroll about eight players who bowled for the closing institution or had been recruited to do so.
Niagara had already been considering starting a team. Bowling is a prominent sport in the area, said Simon Gray, associate vice president for athletics at Niagara, which is in the town of Niagara University, N.Y.
Then Medaille announced in May that it would close. The college faced financial pressures. Plans to sell itself to Trocaire College, another institution in the region, fell through.
Medaille’s women’s bowling program was attractive athletically. The Division III team even beat the highly ranked University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 2021, when that D-I team went on to win the national championship.
But this is about more than sports. The bowling team has also been strong academically, and it will help Niagara get noticed and recruit students, Gray said. “We’re all looking for differentiators in higher education.”
Think strategically: Athletics can be crucial for small private colleges that struggle to recruit enough students to meet budgets. This is true even at the Division I level, where colleges use a combination of athletic and merit aid to compete for athletes.
Think opportunistically: Niagara didn’t have a template for starting a bowling program, or even a template for acquiring one, Gray said. But its leaders had done their homework. In recent years they’d evaluated factors like operating, personnel, and scholarship expenses associated with adding different sports.
And now Niagara won’t need to build its own facility for the team, which will keep bowling at the same lanes as Medaille.
But don’t forget the human element: Gray was quick to say he’s sad to see Medaille go out of business. Its bowlers thought their team would be disbanded when the university first announced its closure. Now, they’re excited to stay together, he said.
The bigger picture: The bowling team is one example of how colleges can pick up students, employees, and programs from institutions that close.
“It’s not just bowling. This is a campus initiative to sort of open our arms,” Gray said.
