(The Center Square) – While enrollment at many colleges and universities across the country is slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels, that is not the case on all campuses, including Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash.
Lower enrollment means less revenue for CWU, and the gloomy financial picture led to Athletic Director Dennis Francois’s recent decision to discontinue both the men’s and women’s varsity rugby programs.
On most college campuses, rugby is not recognized as a varsity sport but is more often a club sport. However, since its initial designation as a varsity sport at CWU in 2014, rugby has grown in popularity, drawing players from around the world.
“Since COVID, essentially, our enrollment has definitely struggled,” Francois told The Center Square on Monday. “We were about 12,000 students on campus prior to COVID, and now we’re about 8,500, and so that has had a huge impact on a lot of things, and one of the biggest for us was the student fee.”
Francois explained that the university brought in about $1.5 million in student fees before COVID; now it’s just a little over $1 million.
“So, it was about $450,000 per year, and that’s significant for us for sure,” he continued. “Maybe not for UW [University of Washington] or Washington State, but that’s a lot of money for us.”
He noted that inflationary costs for team travel have also gone up significantly, leading to the decision last Fall to begin examining athletics and associated costs for CWU.
“We really didn’t make a final decision until February and then made a decision not to make the announcement [about rugby] essentially until after their competitive seasons were over,” said Francois.
He shared that he has faced criticism for waiting until April 15 to tell the coaches and players that rugby at CWU was being discontinued.
“A lot of people second-guessed that in terms of the timing, but we really wanted to make sure our student athletes, and our coaches, and our teams had the best opportunity to compete at a high level and be successful,” Francois explained. “I think receiving that news mid-season was not the best choice in my view, so we waited until after the seasons were complete.”
For players like Jaiden Beer, whose life has primarily revolved around rugby, learning that his college career at CWU was over was devastating.
“I played since I was 3, so for 17 years, I guess,” said Beer, who is from Christchurch, New Zealand.
Beer told The Center Square that he already had U.S. citizenship from his mother and wanted to attend a university in the United States after finishing high school.
“I got in touch with an agency that helps international students find scholarships in America, and I had a couple of different scholarship offers, but settled on Central. Rugby is why I came to America,” he said.
The 20-year-old, who is back home in New Zealand finalizing school transfer plans for the 2025-26 school year, said the entire coaching staff and team were blindsided to learn CWU was cutting rugby.
“We had no idea, I mean the program was one of the most successful at Central,” he said, noting he was at work when the notice came – Apr 15 – of an optional meeting, where players were informed of the bad news.
“I didn’t believe them, and I got home from work, and I saw Cade and Benji, my roommates [also rugby players], and it didn’t feel real. We were training so hard with literal blood, sweat, and tears, and we got blindsided with this,” Beer lamented.
CWU did offer to cover scholarships for student athletes for the 2025-26 school year, but Beer said with two years left before he graduates, it doesn’t make financial sense to stay.
“I’m looking to transfer to another school, but because of how late they cut the program, it made it so difficult for us,” he said, explaining some former teammates are staying at CWU to play rugby as a club sport. “I’m looking at transferring to USD [University of San Diego], where I’ve already been accepted.”
Beer does not agree with Francois’s argument that it was better not to notify the players and coaches before the end of the season.
“I feel like if we found out we’d been cut, since we were all competitors, it might have even given us more fight,” he said. “They should have told us.”
Francois explained that it was incredibly difficult to inform coaches and staff that their contracts were not being renewed and to inform the 70 to 75 athletes that their sport was being cut.
“I was here when we brought rugby on as varsity sports, so I was part of that decision and that was 10 years ago, and the commitment that we made at that time, was that we will add rugby as long as it doesn’t impact the student athlete experience of our other sports,” he said. “We got to that point this year when the university was supplementing our budget [athletics] to the tune of about $750,000 additional than they were prior to COVID.”
He also shared that rugby is not an NCAA championship sport, so they played under USA Rugby.
“And so unfortunately, the more success we had in the playoffs, the more expensive it got because the NCAA pays for the playoff experience for all of our other sports that are championship sports, but not Rugby,” Francois said.
Washington State University also recently announced cuts to athletics.
In a brief statement last week, WSU said that “the change in its approach for the WSU Track & Field program is the best opportunity for remaining competitive in the conference and nationally.”
WSU stated the change would keep the program competitive in cross-country distance events and indoor and outdoor track and field, but long and high jumps, javelin, shot put, and other track and field events have been cut.
“Impacted student-athletes will have their scholarships honored should they choose to remain at WSU,” read the statement.
The Center Square reached out to WSU’s athletic director for comment on the decision but did not receive a response in time for publication.
WSU enrollment has continued to struggle post-pandemic. In fall 2019, there were 31,600 enrolled students, and just under 25,700 Cougars were enrolled in fall 2024.
Despite the enrollment declines at CWU and WWU, the University of Washington and Western Washington University saw improved enrollment this year, and college and university enrollment nationwide has improved.
Fall enrollment in 2024-25 was up 4.5% compared to the previous academic year, according to research provided by bestcolleges.com. The same report noted that in fall 2024, more than 307,000 students were enrolled in Washington colleges and universities, up 4.6% from the year before.
