Daniel Peterson/Student LifeMany coaches of professional sports teams complain that, in today’s complicated world of salary caps and free agency, it is impossible to put together a championship team on a “shoestring” budget.
While these professional coaches’ budgets consist of tens of millions of dollars, Lynn Imergoot, head coach of the women’s tennis team, does not have even ten thousand dollars. Nevertheless, she always puts up a competitive team and hardly ever complains about her lack of resources.
Obviously, it would be na‹ve to think that the money and skill involved in professional sports is the same as the money and skill involved in Division III athletics, but the truth is nobody gets more bang for their buck than Imergoot.
In the 28 years of the tennis program’s existence, the team has never had a losing record. For 13 of the past 14 years, the women’s tennis team has been in second place in the UAA, and last year the women made it all the way to the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament.
This may not sound impressive to the typical college student, but one has to remember that Imergoot established this team as a result of reforms brought about by Title IX .
In fact, the circumstances that led Imergoot to Washington University were quite bizarre.
“I became a tennis coach by happenstance, even though I had a background both in playing and coaching tennis. When we started the varsity program, the then athletic director, Bruce Melin said, ‘Ok Lynn, which team do you want to coach: tennis, swimming, or volleyball,’ so I was never really hired to be the tennis coach,” Imergoot said.
Even though Imergoot’s initial relationship with the program appeared to be accidental, she was able to build a program from the ground up with little more than pocket change.
Initially, Imergoot had six hundred dollars to work with; since then, she has received more funds, but not enough to keep up with the rate of inflation.
“We have a regular team budget for regular season stuff, but it has not increased in about nine years,” Imergoot said. “A bunch of years ago, student affairs, of which athletics is a part, got, I would say, a 10 percent budget cut… I am not sure we ever recovered from that.”
Looking at the numbers, most people would find it hard to believe it is possible to run an athletic program on the budget Imergoot is given every year. However, the team receives money from two endowed funds, and when combined with fund raising, the budget allows her to keep the program competitive.
After all of this, one has to wonder why Imergoot is not furious with WU and its budget constraints.
However, she understands WU’s economic situation and is not angry or bitter at the school. Imergoot explained that gifts given to the school are usually given for specific things and not for general use. As a result, the amount of money WU has and the amount of money they can spend can be two completely different numbers.
“I guess it was Chancellor Wrighton at one of his meetings who said, ‘The mission of the university is to serve the students and the faculty,’ the faculty being the professors and the academic portion of campus,” Imergoot said. “You can cut away everything that the university has, you can cut away housing, you can cut away food, you can cut away athletics… the only thing you can’t cut away is the ability to educate and grant degrees.”
Although Imergoot is in agreement with the vast majority of the financial decisions made at WU, there are some issues with the tennis program she feels should be addressed soon.
For example, the tennis courts are in shambles, and when the weather is bad, the women’s tennis team has to drive 20 minutes to an indoor tennis club and hope there are available courts to use. The construction of an indoor tennis facility on campus, as unlikely as that may seem, would greatly facilitate things for the entire program.
Imergoot can’t help but question some of the funding WU has used for other aesthetic purposes.
“One day in the fall, I was walking out of the Athletic Complex, and I noticed that the frats had new limestone blocks surrounding a new walkway,” Imergoot said. “I know those little blocks cost a lot of money and frankly, there is no reason for them other than aesthetic reasons,
“If some of that money could have been used to fix up the tennis courts, the playing conditions on the courts would have been much better.”