WSSU football players upset at move

By: John Dell | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: September 11, 2009

The news that Winston-Salem State will be cutting scholarships in athletics was like adding salt to an already wounded football team.

The Rams had lost to Florida A&M on Thursday night 34-10, and less than 24 hours they took another punch to the gut.

Julian Gray, an offensive lineman at Winston-Salem State, sat slumped on a bench outside the Thompson Center and found the news hard to believe.

"I came to this program thinking I was playing for a Division I program," Gray said. "And you have other people on our team, like the younger guys, who turned down offers to play Division I to come here."
What had a lot of the players upset was that not even the coaches knew this was coming.

"You can't blame the coaches because they just heard the rumors like everybody else," said Omar Kizzie, a junior wide receiver. "Now we have a bunch of guys that don't know what's going on or even if they will have a scholarship next year. It's just a bad decision all the way around."

Chancellor Donald Reaves, who spoke to the athletes on campus in a meeting yesterday afternoon, said that a lot of them were upset.

"People are disappointed, there's no way around that," Reaves said. "We just can't continue to run large deficits that are covered at the expense of academic priorities."

Reaves said he plans on working with the athletes to make sure they can transfer if they want or continue their education at WSSU.

"You never want to make a decision that disappoints people or have such a big effect on the lives of people," Reaves said. "I know we have students who were recruited here with the expectations that they were going to play at the Division I level."

For the younger players such as Dominique Fitzgerald, a sophomore from Danville, Va., there will be bigger decisions to make.

Fitzgerald, the Rams' best wide receiver, said he will think about transferring but not until after the season.

"It's kind of upsetting because (the chancellor) said he's been working on this for the last 18 months but it would have been nice to let us know something," Fitzgerald said. "There should have been an explanation before we came in that we might go D-II. Right now, I'm just going to go through the season and make a decision in the spring."

Even the seniors are upset, according to linebacker Juan Corders.

"We've got something like 20 freshmen here and now where do they go?" Corders said. "This was just a bone-headed decision and we are all upset. And it's not just us; it's the rest of the programs on campus."

What upset Jared Mitchell, a redshirt junior, the most was how the move blindsided the whole team.

"Why not get our opinions or let us know what might go on?" Mitchell said. "There was none of that."

Gray tried to sum up the team's feelings after the meeting, saying: "We are all kind of distraught right now."

■ John Dell can be reached at 727-4081 or at jdell@wsjournal.com