Marshall Women’s Swim And Dive Program To Continue 

The Women’s Swimming & Diving program at Marshall University – which the school said last month it would discontinue – will go on after all.  

“Our Board of Governors has just voted to reinstate the Marshall University’s women’s swim and dive team,” announced Marshall Chief Legal Officer Toney Stroud during a press conference on Wednesday. 

The move follows a class action lawsuit filed by the team last week. 

Marshall President Brad Smith said the university flip-flopped on cancelling the program because they were told the move would jeopardize the university’s Title IX standing.   

Following the cancellation, Smith said, “We had additional consultation with outside experts, and in that process, they shared with us that the path that we had chosen could potentially put our university outside the Safe Harbor Framework of Title IX, and in doing so, even if we ended up with more women participating over time, that would put the university in a perilous place.”   

That new information, coupled with what could have been an expensive and divisive lawsuit, led the university to reverse course, Smith said. 

But it doesn’t mean the financial challenges have been resolved.  

“We’re also needing to address other things that are real in college, and that is, we’re trying to bring our pay raises up for our faculty and our staff to be at market levels. We have $300 million in deferred maintenance across Marshall University,” Smith said. “Know when we actually made this decision to reinstate we’re going to have to make tradeoffs elsewhere to fund the decision.” 

Marshall will still add STUNT as a varsity sport, expanding participation opportunities for female student-athletes.