Cal Poly Swim and Dive just got significantly closer to getting back into the pool amid their push for program reinstatement, after receiving a new deadline and fundraising goal from Cal Poly on Saturday, April 26.
According to the Instagram page dedicated to saving the team, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong reached out to the team to inform them that they would now need to raise $20 million, down from the previously set goal of $25 million, by a new June 4 deadline.
They had reached around $7.5 million of the previous $25 million total goal before the announcement was made.
If reached, the funding would be used to set up an endowment, allowing the team to return to Cal Poly permanently.
“The team really believes we can do it,” junior swimmer Jonathan Butler said in a recent appearance on the Gallop podcast. “We can continue to raise more money in the coming months, and be able to be reinstated in the fall, which would be the goal.”
The initial fundraising mark set by the university also had a $10 million checkpoint for April 15, which they missed.
According to the swimmers, the checkpoint turned out not to be a hard deadline like what was initially thought, and the university agreed to extend the fundraising period when the mark was not reached.
They will now have just over a month to raise another $12.5 million, a substantial task for the team, which has been making a strong push for reinstatement ever since it was announced that the program would be cut on March 7.
“We’ve honestly come together more as a team giving more efforts to try to get our team back,” junior swimmer Evan Yoo said on the Gallop. “Everyone on the team is doing their part.”
Reinstatement would be a significant achievement for the program, which has been struggling with budgetary issues due to the recent House v. NCAA settlement and cuts in Cal Poly’s state funding.