Cal Poly swim and dive team cut after failing to reach $15 million goal

After months of fundraising efforts and extended deadlines, it’s now official: Cal Poly’s swim and dive program has been discontinued.

The team fell short of its $15 million fundraising goal to be reinstated by the June 15 deadline, prompting university President Jeffrey Armstrong to release a statement confirming the outcome.

Originally cut in March due to budget constraints, the program was later assigned fundraising targets and extended deadlines in an effort to save it. However, lingering financial uncertainty tied to the recently approved NCAA House settlement played a role in the final decision, Armstrong.

“This is an unfortunate reality given the approved NCAA House settlement, state budget and the tenuous situation moving forward for both the state and the NCAA,” Armstrong said in a press release.

Anticipating the budget cuts, administrators projected a yearly loss of almost $500,000 once the House v. NCAA settlement took effect, on top of what was then an expected 8 percent reduction in state funding to the university.

What once started as a $25 million goal back in March for a chance to be reinstated, was lowered first to $20 million and then further to $15 million in late May.

While no official reason has been given for the reduced fundraising goal, Kelli Hayes, a parent of incoming freshman and top breaststroker Hadley Hayes believes it may be tied to broader budget cuts across the university.

Hayes, who has a background in capital fundraising and who helped lead swim and dive’s fundraising, said she believes the revised target could have been influenced by the shifting financial expectations placed on Cal Poly.

In his May budget revision, Gov. Gavin Newsom scaled the cut back to approximately 3 percent, aiming to provide more stable fiscal planning for the CSU system.

Just one day before the final deadline on June 14, organizers shared on GoFundMe that they had raised nearly $10 million without access to Cal Poly’s donor database or alumni network.

“If we can raise almost $10M in 13 weeks with a fraction of our alumni, had we been given six months, we would’ve hit $15M,” Hayes said.

Without access to Cal Poly’s donor database, Hayes and other supporters had to rely on outdated giving records, some dating back 18 years. These records included lists of past donors to the swim and dive program. With help from dedicated parents, they organized the information into a spreadsheet and launched a grassroots outreach effort.

“We called every old number on that list — most of them were landlines — and we sent postcards to every single address listed,” Hayes said. “That was a key part of how we got the word out was that chunk of files.”

Much of the nearly $10 million raised existed in the form of pledges rather than collected donations. Hayes said she created a pledge form to give interested donors a safe place to pledge an amount they were willing to give.

“They were able to put their stipulations on it,” Hayes said. “It wasn’t notarized.”

Still, Hayes told The Tribune that they are committed to honoring refund requests at any time for those who donated.

What next for swim and dive after missed goal?

Now that the deadline has passed and the goal was not met, organizers say they are still exploring possible paths toward reinstatement. In a post from the Instagram account dedicated to saving the team, they acknowledged that the $9 million raised was not enough, but expressed continued hope.

“While the decision is deeply disheartening, our fight is not over,” the caption read.

Coming off one of its most successful seasons in program history, Cal Poly swim and dive is now coming to an end. With no team to return to, athletes have been left with no choice but to enter the transfer portal, if they haven’t already.

Just 22 days before the program was cut, the team wrapped up a record-breaking season, highlighted by two individual gold medals at the Big West Championships in Houston.

Drew Huston, one of the two gold medalists, became the first to publicly announce his transfer. On March 27, he shared on Instagram that he would be continuing his collegiate career at USC.

As for the Anderson Aquatics Center, the facility will remain in use despite the swim and dive program’s discontinuation. The team was just one of many groups that used the space.

“We did it blind with our hands tied, and we got this far,” Hayes concluded.