Stanford, Facing Pressure, Reverses Plan to Cut 11 Sports

The change of plans came within weeks of the teams potentially dissolving.

Ten months after cutting nearly one-third of its varsity athletic programs, Stanford announced on Tuesday that those 11 sports — including 10 featured at the Olympics — won’t be discontinued after all, ending a fraught battle between supporters of those sports and the university within weeks of the teams potentially dissolving. “It’s hard to say exactly why Stanford changed their mind, but cutting the sports was a huge P.R. problem and huge bad look for them,” Kyler Presho, a senior on the men’s volleyball team, said. “We were relentless in giving them every reason to reconsider and we just didn’t go away. In the end, hey, it worked.” Presho said the volleyball team had heard the news Tuesday morning when its coach, John Kosty, called a videoconferencing meeting. Jeremy Jacobs, a men’s volleyball alumnus who helped lead the 36 Sports Strong advocacy group that worked to keep the 11 cut sports, was the person to deliver the good news.