The men's and women's basketball teams will be traveling together next year for in-conference away games in a NESCAC-wide effort to save money in light of the country's economic downturn.
This past year, if one of the league's teams took on a conference opponent at home, the other team traveled to play that school on the road. Now, both teams will play at home and on the road together.
"These changes happened on a conference level," Director of Athletics Bill Gehling said. "They were made to help all conference schools deal with economic troubles.
"Basically, the main change -- really, the only change -- is that the NESCAC conference schedule is being switched so that the men and women both play home or away on the same weekend, as opposed to having opposite sites as they are now," Gehling continued. "Next year, both will be home or both will be away. And that will result in back-to-back games on our home and away weekends -- doubleheaders -- for the NESCAC contests."
The conference also set a roster maximum on overnight road trips -- which Tufts will do twice next year according to the new scheduling -- limiting teams to 15 players on such occasions.
"There was some discussion about trying to put squad sizes in place for all away competition -- not just basketball -- but that was something that many of us really resisted because the savings were small and the impact on autonomy is relatively large," Gehling said. "But basketball, two of the weekends would be overnights, so those were the situations where we did vote in squad limitations."
The changes happened after a routine meeting between all of the NESCAC's athletic directors. Once the changes were agreed upon, they were sent to the university presidents for approval.
"The athletic directors meet on a regular basis," Gehling said. "This year is a very unique year in the NESCAC conference and across higher education nationally. Higher education has not been spared the impact of the economic downturn. Schools that are well-endowed are impacted even greater because as the endowment drops, so does operating income. Many of our peers are facing significant challenges from a budgetary standpoint. We've had more discussion than ever before about decisions as a conference to help meet budgetary shortfalls in a way that doesn't really reduce the quality of experience for athletes."
While the new schedule will have an effect on Tufts personnel, as training staff and police will have to be present for fewer weekends, Gehling stressed that the main concern in making the decision was the cost of busing.
"There's certainly some cost associated with staff, but the real emphasis is on the bus," Gehling said. "Right now, for example, if women's basketball is away for five NESCAC games, they're traveling in their own bus for those five games. Men are traveling in their own for their five. If instead they go on the same five dates, then they can share a bus. Now instead of 10 bus dates, we've got five bus dates. In essence, depending on the buses, which are not cheap at all, that can save several thousand dollars in the operating budget.
"From the standpoint of the staff," Gehling continued, "it's more efficient to manage both games. For the most part, though, it's not a major means of cost-saving. The staff doesn't get paid by the game, except for student workers. It's really the buses where the cost savings exist."
Despite these changes, neither Bob Sheldon nor Carla Berube, coaches of the men's and women's basketball teams, respectively, foresees the new schedules as having much of an impact on their teams.
"We're traveling with the women; it's a dream come true," Sheldon said.
"I don't see [it having a significant effect]," Berube added. "It's definitely a change, but I'm willing to do whatever the NESCAC needs and Tufts needs, and it'll be fun to watch the men's games, which we don't get to do a lot, so I'll be excited for that."
Even though Berube's squad carried 17 players this year, she doesn't see the new roster maximum as much of an issue either.
"I think that it's fine with our program to have 15 players," Berube said. "I don't think that's a big change for us."
Sheldon, however, feels differently about the limit on players traveling with the squad.
"I wholeheartedly disagree with it," Sheldon said. "Our institution should be able to set our squad size. [The change] will only affect two weekends, so why do it? It's a big deal if you have 16 and one kid doesn't get to go when you're going overnight."
Still, Gehling defends the decisions that were made.
"Fifteen is typical max squad size for basketball; more than that is somewhat unusual," Gehling said. "But if you do carry more, strictly for those two trips, extras would not be allowed to go. That's not at all uncommon for overnight travel at other places, where they have travel squad sizes which can be much different from the overall squad size. Most of the squad sizes that were implemented for our sports are right in line with what our squads tend to be. And it just affects overnights; we don't actually do much in the way of overnights because of [our] central location."
Although other possible changes to the conference were discussed, nothing has yet been enacted.
"We have meetings coming up," Gehling said. "We're talking about all sorts of things -- I'd rather not get into issues still in discussion. I will say, though, that there's a delicate balance between working as a group to do what's best for the conference and also maintaining autonomy of individual schools. That's where it can become difficult to reach a consensus on issues. Institutional autonomy is something that all of us treasure and think is important. There's resistance to doing anything significant, but we'll be looking at all sorts of things."
