The saga continues for Cal Poly Swim and Dive.
The program recently received what they thought was the final blow in an ongoing battle trying to reinstate the program. However, there are new efforts to keep the dream alive.
After receiving almost $9 million in pledges from a handful of big donors and donations in a recent GoFundMe effort, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong announced in a statement last week, "While I appreciate the significant annual support and revocable bequests that have been identified, the fundraising effort has fallen well short of the goal to reinstate the program.”
The goal was to raise $15 million by June 15.
“I think we were pretty confident going in that he would accept that money and we would be able to move forward," sophomore swimmer Sofia Vargas explained. She and her brother, Camilo, run the social media pages for Save Cal Poly Swim and Dive.
In a phone call with alumnus Tom Johnson, who has been helping spearhead conversations to garner alumni support to save the program, he said that if the "university was looking to save the team, they already would have," going on to say that when "they realized they wouldn’t hit the goal, they hoped they had raised enough to buy them more time."
But now, there are alternative routes.
Vargas explained that a new GoFundMe is up and running to establish ways of reinstatement through legal and strategic expenses, public awareness/outreach and any other reinstatement efforts approved by the team.
“Initially, I was pretty sad, but then I immediately was motivated and was looking into other avenues and I had a lot of people reach out to me,” Vargas said.
Johnson and Vargas both explained that despite the formal announcement, they have been given the go ahead to raise the money needed for a $15 million endowment by President Armstrong in an e-mail:
"If the university were to receive an endowment offer at some point in the future, that would fully fund swimming and diving, we would consider it on its merits at that time."
Johnson believes there is hope but that the program will likely look different and the fundraising will need to be alumni-driven.
“Over the past few years, like we've been through a lot as a team and like one thing about us is we never give up," Vargas stated proudly.
Johnson added that some of the money raised was in the form of pledges contingent on reinstatement, explaining that two of pledges totaled $5 million in living trusts; however, it’s unclear if those pledges will be honored should Cal Poly fail to be reinstated this year. The $500,000 in the original GoFundMe donations have been refunded, according to Johnson and Vargas.
