Sports panel says CCSN program will cost $250,000 in first year

The committee charged with studying the feasibility of starting an organized sports program at the Community College of Southern Nevada has estimated that the cost for the program's first year would be approximately $250,000.

The $250,000 figure, that the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee added to its report, is derived from the cost of starting the program with two men's sports and two women's sports.

The committee also made some wording changes in the report on Wednesday as the group prepared to make a recommendation to move forward with the program to the state Board of Regents.

The final draft of the committee's report is due by next week so that it can be presented to the regents for a decision at their Las Vegas meetings on Oct. 1-2.

Regent Nancy Price, who attended the meeting at the Charleston Campus along with regents Mark Alden and David Phillips, wondered if the $250,000 price tag was to good to be true.

"If you could do it for a quarter of a million dollars it would be wonderful, but I'm not yet convinced that it can be done for that," Price said.

Along with funding Price said that the regents would likely question whether community college students had the time to make sports a part of their schedules, and if sports should be a part of a community college's mission.

Regent Mark Alden does not share Price's concerns about the proposed athletic program.

"Athletics has been made into a dirty word and it's not," Alden said. "There is a demand in this community for this program. There are a lot of bright young student-athletes in Nevada that have no place to go to continue playing sports at the college level."

The feasibility report touches on a wide variety of areas including providing Nevada high school students with a way to continue competing in athletics, bringing in community support for athletics, locating adequate athletic facilities for games and determining the cost of starting the program.

Many committee members felt that student support would go a long way in convincing the regents to accept the group's recommendation to go forward with the program.

"Large numbers of students that we have talked to are supportive of a sports program," said committee member David Abramson.

One of those students, James Anderson, said he has no problem with the school starting a sports program.

"At my last school in Sacramento we had sports and they weren't a detriment to the college," Anderson said. "If playing sports is part of what you want to do in college, then you should be able to do it."

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