Why does McHenry County College only have eight sports? The simple answer
is money, but it’s also just not about the money, it’s about the interest level in having a
new sport like cross-country, lacrosse or football.

Karen Wiley, the Athletic Director for MCC said that there are three ways to start a new sports program at MCC.

The first way to add a sport is the money route where a group of athletes get together and budget out everything from a coach’s salary, travel, contracts with golf courses, uniforms, awards and allocating semester hours to their teams. The athletes would then present their budget to the administrative board and the administration would decide if they could add the sport to their yearly budget.

The second way MCC could add a sport is by having the existing eight sports be so good that the athletic program would have to bring on new challenges by adding new sports. As it stands right now the sports offerings at MCC are hitting,  “a ceiling — our teams are very, very successful and we’re hitting our head on that ceiling to the point we need certain facilities to expand with the popularity, with the needs and desires of our teams presently and those that are wishing to compete,” Wiley said.

If students at MCC want a sport to be added to the existing eight sports, students need to support the already existing sports so that those teams can remain successful. If the current sports at MCC
remain successful, that would signal the administration that there is a need to expand the already existing sports. But also expanding into other sports so that the new teams can be just as successful as the established teams at MCC.

The third and final way to start a new sport at MCC is the simplest of the three. And the simple way of
starting a new sport is to start the sport out as a club sport where you only need an advisor and all the fees are paid by the students. A student could start a sport out as a club and as that club grows, the leader of the club could ask the members who would like to make the club into an official sport of MCC. If the members want to do that, the club would have to go to the administration and budget everything needed for the sport. Not only do they need to budget everything, but they would need to prove to the administration that there is a need and a want to have the sport.

That sounds simple enough but MCC is a very cost effective school with very low tuition. Wiley said, “our college is very aware of our community’s desire to keep our tuition low and tax levies low and not to put the pressure on the community to provide more tax money to our college.”

The budget for the college is not going to go up anytime soon and as Wiley said, “our budget is at a flat
line and it’s like asking to do more with less.”

The administration would need to agree that MCC needed  the new sport. A coach and players would also have to prove to the citizens of McHenry County that adding a new sport to MCC justifies raising taxes. Players and the coach would also have to prove to the administration that adding a certain sport would add many students to MCC.

So is MCC going to add new sports? Maybe. You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take — if
no potential student athletes take a chance and see what happens with a new sport’s program, MCC will have the same eight sports. Athletes who want a new sport need to fight like hell to add the sport to MCC, and if  that sport is added they need to keep fighting to keep the sport a successful part of the athletic program.