Post Pioneer

Shortly after the announcement, track runners came together through the Internet, in an effort to organize a response to the news.

The runners and their supporters, several hundred strong on a Facebook group titled "Save Post Track and Field" Friday morning, made their disgust known soon after the news was announced. With much of the team away from C.W. Post for the summer, Michael Ringhauser, a first-year graduate elementary education student and Pioneer sports writer, started a Facebook group the next day, and teammates and former coaches posted letters they sent to administrators and the media. At least four message boards have topics dedicated to the situation, and Newsday published a report on the situation, titled "C.W. Post timing way off track" on July 2. The report followed more than 100 e-mails to Newsday regarding the closing, according to the Facebook group.

The letters share a common thread-outrage aimed squarely at the decision and how the students felt they were excluded from the decision-making process.

"To say that the track and field alumni and myself are utterly appalled at your decision to end the track program and absolutely disgusted by the way you have chosen to go about this decision is a complete and total understatement," Ringhauser wrote June 29. "To not have the decency to, at the very least, discuss or even announce your decision to the coaches and current athletes whose lives this decision impacts before posting it on your website is unbelievably unprofessional and unbecoming of a university this program has represented well over the previous forty-plus years."

Sarah Lefrancois, a photography major who runs track and cross country, said she was deeply hurt by the announcement. "To hear today that MY team, MY friends were being rejected by the C.W. Post athletic department - a school we proudly wore the colors of - was one of the most hurtful things I could have heard," she said.

"If there were a list of wrong, unintelligent, simply outrageous things a University could do, dropping the Track and Field program at Post would be on the top of it," Garrett Champan, a first-year graduate Business Administration student and Pioneer photographer, said. He noted there were 90 All-Americans produced by the program, 20 conference championships in the last 7 years and two valedictorians, including the 2006-2007 honoree, Derek Petti.

"One of the underlining factors I had to go C.W Post has unexpectedly become obsolete," Kristen Sweeney, sophomore photography major, said. "I can still recall the College Board searches I did, to find the perfect school for me. I wanted a school that not only provided my major, but also an active Track program. My searches led me to develop an interest, and ultimately attend C.W Post. Unfortunately, the search did not foretell that I'd only have a mere season to participate."

"Track and field has been a huge part of my life, and if C.W Post cannot fit it into the athletic program, then I guess I made the wrong decision on going here after all," she said.

"You have just killed a tradition that has produced All-Americans and great people," Chris Mammone, assistant track coach, said. "But since you obviously don't care about either one of those keep in mind that we will all be Alumni of C.W. Post and will never contribute a penny."

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