Women's varsity basketball benched for at least two years at Cambrian College
Decision affects 7 students who would have been returning to the team in the fall
Cambrian College won't be competing in women's varsity basketball over the next two years.
In a news release, the post secondary school in Sudbury, Ont., announced Tuesday it was suspending its women's basketball program for the 2017-18 season.
The same decision was made last year with Cambrian's men's varsity basketball.
Under the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association regulations the college will not be able to put a team in for two seasons, until 2019-2020.
Coaching inconsistencies
The coach of Cambrian's women's team stepped down in January for personal reasons, says Alison De Luisa, associate vice president of student and employee development.
That coach had only been with the team since the fall of 2015.
"We brought in a coach just to finish the [2016-17] season. Then we did do a public posting for a coach for this season. Unfortunately we weren't successful in finding a coach that was the right fit for us, moving forward," says De Luisa.
Coaching not the only problem
The coaching situation wasn't the only stumbling block says De Luisa.
Over the last three years the women's basketball team at Cambrian won just three games.
"What I will say about our athletes is they would go into every game, they would work hard, they would continue to compete, but unfortunately we just didn't see the wins over the last few years," says De Luisa.
She adds there are seven players who are affected by the suspension. They have all been told.
De Luisa says although the athletes are disappointed they understand the school's decision.
However, women's varsity basketball could return in the future.
De Luisa says this is just a program suspension. The program could be reviewed and revived in the future.
Other sports to play
In the meantime, Cambrian plans to focus efforts on the varsity sports it does have: men's and women's soccer, men's and women's volleyball and men's and women's cross country running.
De Lusia says the women's soccer and volleyball teams did extremely well this past season.
Cambrian also plans to increase its intramural sports programming, so students who wouldn't normally get involved in varsity sports can still be active.
With files from Angela Gemmill