Sonoma State University to Restore Most Sports

Sonoma State University will bring back intercollegiate sports in 2027 following a two-year absence driven by administrators’ decision to eliminate all athletics to help close a major budget deficit.

SSU will have 10 NCAA Division II sports teams moving forward — dropping baseball and women’s track and field. The revived programs will include men’s and women’s soccer, basketball, golf and cross country, and women’s softball and volleyball.

NCAA Division II membership requires a minimum of 10 sports for participating universities.

Athletics “are an exciting way to engage our communities, help generate school spirit, enhance the student experience, and increase recruiting efforts,” SSU President Michael Spagna said in a press release, while adding that “community engagement and support will be essential to athletics’ success.”

The elimination of sports was one of the big flashpoints amid sustained backlash over an unprecedented slate of nearly $24 million in budget cuts announced in January 2025 by then-interim SSU President Emily Cutrer.

The sweeping cuts included more than 100 layoffs, the shuttering of six academic departments and elimination of almost two-dozen degree programs in addition to shuttering sports. The moves roiled the Rohnert Park campus and set off months of protests, no-confidence votes by faculty, and legislative intervention.

The athletics community, with strong support from alumni, rallied on campus, testified in Long Beach at California State University system’s trustees meetings and created a grassroots “Save Seawolves Athletics” campaign. SSU coaches filed civil rights complaints over the impacts of the cuts, and several student-athletes sued the university over how they were carried out. That litigation is ongoing.

When Josh Sterling heard the news of the plan to bring sports back and relayed it to his family, he said, “I had tears in my eyes.”

Sterling, a prominent Sonoma State soccer alum and member of “Save Seawolves Athletics,” called the grassroots group “about as powerful a movement as you see in college athletics.”

“Pressure’s one word,” Sterling said. “But I think it’s the overwhelming support. Like they went, ‘Oh my god, we didn’t know this existed.’ I think they knew that the moment we started marching around, with T-shirts, NBA players talking about us,” he added, in reference to advocacy on social media and the court by Memphis Grizzlies power forward and Seawolves alum Jaylen Wells.

Ben Ziemer, a longtime men’s assistant soccer coach at Sonoma State, heard the news via a text group of program alumni that was started by his brother, former head coach Marcus Ziemer.

It was a bittersweet moment. Ben knew how happy Marcus would have been to learn sports was returning to SSU, after his leading efforts to propel such an outcome last year. Marcus died in March after suffering a traumatic head injury in an electric scooter accident in Germany.

Ben Ziemer had mixed feelings for other reasons, too. He welcomed the decision by university and Cal State officials, but can’t help but be frustrated at the process.

“We grew up on the campus,” Ziemer said of his brothers. “So it was a shame to see it led by consecutive bad decisions. I blame the chancellor’s office, all the way to bad decisions made on the ground. Hopefully this brings SSU back to where it belongs. It should be the leading educational institution and a bright light for the North Coast.”

Ziemer said he was disappointed that baseball, one of the university’s most gilded programs, was not included among the sports set for reinstatement. He hopes it might return in the future.

Even after SSU secured a one-time $90 million windfall in rescue funds through the state Legislature last year, including $8 million to revive athletics, the future of sports at Sonoma State was unclear and leadership held back from making any promises.

A task force set up last summer and then a “fiscal feasibility team” announced by Spagna soon after he took over at SSU in January set out to determine the program’s ultimate fate, which hinged on questions of long-term financial sustainability.

In the meantime, the university hired Joan McDermott as interim director of athletics in April to help with those efforts and is still looking to hire an athletics development officer. There have been white papers and meetings and the fiscal feasibility team submitted a final set of projections and recommendations in mid-June.

Spagna was set to announce the university’s ultimate decision at a June 30 press conference that was cancelled less than 16 hours in advance without explanation for “further deliberation and fact-gathering,” SSU’s spokesperson said at the time.

The call to cut sports last year initially was “missing broader consideration for the impact of athletics” on campus life and a university’s draw, said Robert Eyler, who co-chaired the feasibility team. “We saw so much upheaval as a result of that decision that as a group we felt there was going to be support for athletics coming back.”

Now, the idea is to “think about athletics more holistically,” Eyler said, and “what it may do for recruitment of students alongside student athletes.”

State Sen. Mike McGuire, who led efforts to secure state funding for SSU, echoed the sentiment in a statement: “Bringing back athletics will help invigorate student life, attract and retain new students, and restore a critical piece of Seawolf spirit.”

Much of Sonoma State’s budget crisis stemmed from plummeting enrollment over the past decade — the steepest decline of several struggling California State University campuses. The latest enrollment data for SSU showed a total of 5,651 students, an uptick after a further drop off last fall in the wake of the cuts.

In practice for athletics, that means tapping the networks that were energized by the campaign to save SSU sports; finding ways to engage community before and after games, making broader use of facilities, and building out a base of philanthropic support that will be necessary to sustain the programming.

Key to that will be the athletics development director, a first for SSU where before coaches would take on fundraising efforts.

The feasibility team estimated start-up year expenses at $2.8 million for the 2026-2027 fiscal year, which could be covered by state rescue funds, according to an executive summary of the report shared by SSU. The group forecast $6 million to $7 million in annual costs for the first five years.

According to materials released by SSU, funding for athletics will come through a combination of the state money, existing student fees, expected net tuition revenue based on the number of new student athletes — the university anticipates a total of 186 athletes will fill its teams — community fundraising and sponsorships and fees from sports camps and outside use of campus sports facilities. State funds will also be used to upgrade facilities.

“The proof will be in the pudding,” Eyler said, and the university will do in-depth annual reviews and strategic planning. “The hope is we really get the momentum we need to lift all boats.”

Eyler said SSU is open to adding more teams in the future as long as there is the financial backing, likely dependent on philanthropic means.

Student athlete recruitment will start after coaching and support staff positions are filled. SSU invited former coaches to apply.

Emiria Salzmann, who coached women’s soccer at Sonoma State for 13 seasons before taking a similar job at the College of Marin — she’s also a former Seawolves player who is in the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame — is happy for the community, the school and the students who may now play sports at the local Cal State campus.

“I just really believe in the moral, ethical and physical value of sports,” Salzmann said. “It’s not only important, but necessary, for the healthy development of the minds and bodies of students. And SSU is showing it believes in that.”

Salzmann said it was “painful” to watch the elimination of the women’s sports program she worked to sustain. She’s thrilled it will be resurrected, but has questions about how this will all be implemented. “What is the plan?”

Sterling, too, acknowledged there’s a lot to be worked out — hiring coaches, recruiting talent, preparing facilities. But, for now, he said, it’s time for the community to be positive, and perhaps to start thinking about ways to strengthen SSU’s athletic programs. “Sports are back,” he said. “And the only way sports stay is if we’re 100% behind it.”