Wolfe Hopes Cobb Gives His Program a New Life

FULLERTON —  On the long drive to San Jose Thursday, Dick Wolfe talked to his Cal State Fullerton gymnastics team about the end of something.

“What’s going to happen?” they asked. “Where will we go?”

While the 11th-ranked Titans drove north for a meet against San Jose State today, Fullerton’s Athletics Council voted to drop the program, along with men’s and women’s fencing, in order to solve a budget crisis intensified by a need to devote more money to women’s sports.

The proposal will be submitted for the approval of University President Jewel Plummer Cobb.

Wolfe’s last hope is that she will reject it.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course.”

Wolfe has been the coach of the Fullerton team since 1968. His teams have won three college division national championships, and he has been national coach of the year three times.

“I started the program at Cal State Fullerton,” said Wolfe, 49. “My blood is on the walls. . . . I’ve spent most of my life in Cal State Fullerton’s gym. Every day, six days a week, 11 months a year. I can’t imagine not going up in the gym and working with kids. I can’t imagine not doing it at Fullerton.”

If Cobb approves the program’s discontinuation, the gymnasts will be allowed to transfer without penalty under NCAA rules. Wolfe does not know what he would do.

“It’s very painful,” he said. “If it actually happens, it’s like a death. You’ve got to be there some way. Help the team grieve and get over it. It’s not a light thing.”

The men’s program is proposed to be cut, but the Fullerton women’s program would continue.

Because of a study that showed Fullerton is not allocating enough funds to women’s sports to fulfill the requirements of Title IX, the law that prohibits discrimination in education because of sex, the women’s team is allocated an increase of $53,528 under the proposed budget. That amount is a good portion of the men’s current budget of $96,617.