Colleges continue cutting tennis programs to fund other sports and athlete payments
The NCAA men's and women's tennis tournaments opened Friday, and what should be a time of celebration for the sport has had a pall cast over it with more Division I schools announcing this week they would be dropping their programs because of the new financial realities in college athletics. Arkansas announced a week ago it would drop its men's and women's programs and Saint Louis followed Monday with the same announcement. Illinois State said Tuesday it would end its men's program, and North Dakota said Thursday it would shut down its men's and women's teams.
Gardner-Webb announced in February this would be the last season for the men's and women's programs. Arkansas and Gardner-Webb are among the 64 teams in the men's NCAA Tournament. The number of Division I schools sponsoring tennis in 2024-25 was 237 for men and 304 for women.
An NCAA spokeswoman said Friday that numbers for 2025-26 were unavailable. Dozens of schools across all divisions shut down programs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since revenue sharing with athletes started last year, Division I schools have chosen to redirect resources to fund direct payments to athletes in football, basketball and a few other sports.
The Arkansas decision caught the college tennis community off-guard. “We in the tennis world have sort of been battling this at the lower levels of college tennis, but not the big, bad SEC,” ESPN tennis analyst and former college and pro player Patrick McEnroe said on the WholeHogSports podcast. "The Division II schools and some of the smaller Division I programs over the years, you're always sort of on the lookout in the tennis community to fight and protect as many programs as possible.
" Tennis has been targeted as youth participation for American boys and girls has declined and the ratio of international players at U. S. colleges has continued to grow.