On May 12, two days after graduation, news broke via email that the EIU men’s and women’s tennis teams had been cut.
Former EIU tennis coach Robin Cambier said he found out the program was cut the same day the statement was sent out. He found out just a few hours before the tennis players found out through their emails.
The option to transfer had already been open for over a week by the time the team was informed, putting the players at a huge disadvantage in finding a new team.
When the transfer portal opens, coaches have the ability to fill their roster as quickly as possible. Small schools already lack opportunity in the transfer portal, Cambier said.
Getting in late wastes a whole week of coaches offering opportunities to other Division 1 players, D2 players and junior college players.
It’s like signing up for classes a week after everyone else on campus got to it.
University President Jay Gatrell said it was his difficult decision in consultation with athletic director Tom Michael to cut the tennis programs.
The timing of the decision, Gatrell said, was to ensure students completed the season and final exams as to avoid or minimize any potential impact on student academics.
When a program is cut or a head coach leaves a program, the transfer portal automatically opens.
If the portal had opened a week earlier or before finals, the tennis players would have been able to put their names out earlier than any other tennis players could.
Even if an athlete entered the portal, they would still finish the school year at Eastern, meaning they would take finals and get grades back well before leaving. Had the university really cared about what’s best for the players, the decision to cut the team would have been made earlier.
According to Cambier, six men’s tennis players entered the transfer portal. Only three found a new place to go to, with the other three, all international students, having to move back home.
On the women’s side, five players ended up transferring, Cambier said. All five ended up at lower division schools. For both teams, their placements were partially due to skill level and partially due to the disadvantage of the later portal entries, he said.
How long did the athletic department have the decision to cut the team made for? Nobody affected knows.
When attempting to contact Michael and former tennis player now swim graduate assistant Luisa Renovales Salazar, associate athletic director Rich Moser said, “The statement from the university that was made back in May is the only statement athletics will be making on the program being cut.”
This isn’t the first time a sport has been cut like this before. When the EIU wrestling team was cut in 2007, the circumstances looked quite similar to now.
It was May 17, 2007, shortly after the university let out for summer, when the team was cut without warning. Additionally, the Great Recession was on its way, coming at the end of the year.
A big change was made in the National Collegiate Athletic Association coming with the threat of costing the university. This time, though, the change was from the Academic Progress Rate, a program designed to raise academic performance of college athletes, not a settlement.
The requirement for APR was a score of 925; EIU had a score of 851. And as a result, the athletic director at the time Rich McDuffie decided to cut the team.
It was a rash decision then, hinging on the idea that the NCAA could restrict membership status if a team was cited four times.
But as 2009 columnist Richard Morse pointed out, the APR requirements do not dictate that a team be cut if it doesn’t reach a good enough score.
Instead, the requirement was that the school submit a get-well plan to do better academically.
Even if it required taking away the scholarships from tennis, Cambier believes the team could have operated. At the very least, he said he wished the university tried some changes before taking the drastic option.
The statement on tennis cited costs like competing in two conferences, staffing, regional recruitment struggles and court maintenance as reasons to cut.
Cambier agreed that the tennis teams faced these challenges, just not to the degree emphasized.
The total cost of each tennis team included the cost of coach salaries, the cost of scholarships and team budgets.
He said his salary and his assistant coach’s salary came to around $83,000 split between both of them.
“Us college coaches, at least in tennis, you don’t do it for the money,” he said. “You’re just really there to help them have a great experience.”
Team budgets were $30,000 per team, Cambier said. According to Equity in Athletics Data Analysis, these numbers hold up as tennis totaled $54,037 in the 2024 fiscal year.
For scholarships, Cambier said tennis had five and a half: four for women’s and one and a half for men’s. Otherwise on the team, 13 other players were paying tuition to go here, with most being from out of the country and paying the more expensive rate.
Gatrell said any player with a scholarship that chose to stay at EIU would maintain that scholarship for up to eight semesters.
According to the Trends in the Participation of International Student-Athletes in NCAA Divisions I and II report from September 2023, 64% of men’s tennis players and 61% of women’s tennis players in the NCAA are international students.
Cambier said EIU’s tennis team was split 70% international and 30% national—a ratio that is quite close to the NCAA ratio.
A heavy-winded storm in April 2025 caused some damage to the tennis courts, tossing around some benched, a set of bleachers and affecting several of the fences on the court.
But even with the team gone, the old tennis courts appear to be fixed from the storm damage today. The benches are back in place, the tarps are back up and the flipped bleachers were moved back.
Additionally, new pickleball courts were put in over summer as part of a recreation fund.
Cambier said he will always be thankful for Gatrell, Michael and deputy athletic director Mark Bonnstetter giving him a chance as he moves into his new role as assistant women’s tennis coach at Ole Miss.
“For me, EIU was my first head coaching job after having been an assistant, associate all that stuff for 10 years,” Cambier said. “A part of me will always be really thankful for the opportunity those three individuals gave me.”
At The News, we understand the lingering threat of the House v. NCAA settlement. We understand the budget deficit and the pressure to overcome it quickly. We understand that sometimes things must go in order to keep the university afloat financially.
But how this decision was communicated was wrong.
Holding off on communicating the intention to cut a program is unacceptable. If the decision was made in just a week, that would be even worse.
Making the tennis teams wait until after prime availability to transfer had passed is not for the benefit of the student athlete no matter the academic circumstance.
This cut directly impacted 18 student athletes and two coaches. But leaving out 20 people is missing the mark on the university’s slogan of all in.
These students were denied opportunities and sent away because of either poor planning or a choice to hold back information. Yes, they could have chosen to stay at EIU, but student athletes are here because they want to play.
We strongly urge the athletic department and administration to do better for their students—every last one of them.
The Editorial Board can be reached at 581-2812 or at dennewsdesk@gmail.com.
