The University of Wisconsin-Platteville and UW-Whitewater will be the only UW System institutions that offer men’s soccer as an official sport in fall 2016, as UW-Oshkosh concludes their final year as a program.

Reasons as to why the team was cut include budget concerns, Title IX and a lack of a stable conference and automatic playoff qualifier.

“I think all of us are still unsure about what the real factors behind it are, but we’ve been given a few explanations that have kind of been changed and recycled over time,” UW-Oshkosh men’s head soccer coach, Wytse Molenaar said.

UW-Oshkosh reached the NCAA tournament 13 times in the last 26 years. UW-Platteville, under head coach Enzo Fuschino, guided the Pioneer program to five winning seasons and two trips to the national tournament in the last seven years.

Last week the unranked Pioneers defeated No. 5 UW-Whitewater, just weeks after defeating the then-ranked No. 17 Titans of UW-Oshkosh.

“If you look at this year, Platteville, Whitewater and Oshkosh soccer have had a great season,” Molenaar said. “There have been a lot of ups recently and two of us have been in the NCAA tournament, so it’s also proven that a conference with an automatic qualifier, which we’ve never had, isn’t needed. What is needed is a great competition and rivals—and we have that.”

This year, the only two programs from the previous Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference that UW-Platteville competed against were UW-Whitewater and UW-Oshkosh. Past members included UW-Superior and Finlandia University. As of now, UW-Whitewater is in the playoffs at No. 1 in the north region, while UW-Oshkosh and UW-Platteville await an at-large bid.

UW-Oshkosh men’s soccer team recently raised over $60,000 in efforts of saving the program for at least another year. Players from UW-Oshkosh women’s soccer team wrote online articles to help raise awareness around campus and around other UW System schools.

“This summer they went to countless youth tournaments to raise money and have their petition signed. They ended up raising enough money that they could use to play multiple seasons with but the athletic director won’t allow any of it and is not willing to help them in any way,” UW-Oshkosh women’s soccer player, Kaitlyn Schauer said.

At a UW-Platteville Student Senate meeting held on Nov. 2, Chancellor Dennis Shields said that the Pioneer athletic department was told they had to reduce their budget by $200,000. Athletic director Mark Molesworth told him that they could find ways to obtain that amount without cutting a sport.

As a former athlete, Shields understands the importance of student althetics.“I can’t stand here and promise that I would be opposed to eliminating a cut to an athletic team,” Shields said.

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