An American Tragedy

The messages are coming in via Blackberry and Wi-Fi–powered laptops, Dell and Apple and IBM—all from a sizeable group of former American University tennis players and fans. Their beef? A tale too oft-told these days: College bean-counters and administrators decide to cut tennis programs, then make a unilateral announcement that leaves alums shocked and awed, and players scrambling to transfer so they can continue their careers in that distinguished, student-athlete tradition. You can read the specifics here in the Eagle.

Note, by the way, that the Eagles weren’t exactly stinking out the joint. In an e-mail, former No. 1 singles player Tushar Garg hit the highlights:

Wait. It gets worse. As Stewart Weltman, father of AU player Ben Weltman, writes:

Here’s another funny thing–my wife, Lisa, who grew up near the Washington, D.C., school, says AU has a reputation for drawing from an affluent, international base–doesn’t that make tennis a sport AU should feature and promote?

It’s hard for those of us out of touch with collegiate life to appreciate that this kind of ruthless move is not just traumatic and sad, but—at various levels—a deep betrayal. But the words that really put this in perspective for me were those of the student athletes quoted in the Eagle article, and that of former player Andrej Loncar (class of 2001), who left his home in war-torn Serbia and, after great difficulties, made it to AU. Andrej wrote me:

Doesn’t that put it all in a nutshell?

Stay tuned—these are bitterly disappointed folks and they’re making their voices heard. We’ll update you on their struggle.