Cal Baptist sophomore libero Emmett Enriques, a 2015 Kamehameha graduate, and the rest of his Lancer volleyball teammates were blindsided.
No one on the team, including the coaches, knew men’s volleyball was being dropped until athletic director Micah Parker announced the news Monday on the school’s website.
Cal Baptist discontinued its men’s volleyball program effective immediately as it prepares to move to the Western Athletic Conference and Division I status.
“Decisions to discontinue a program are never easy,” Parker said on the website. “As we look at the long-term future of our athletics department, however, we feel this decision is needed based on budgetary and competitive factors as CBU moves toward D-I status.”
In the same release, Parker also announced plans to add women’s beach volleyball in the near future and called it an emerging NCAA sport growing in popularity.
The same could be said about men’s volleyball. The NCAA Championships only recently started play-in, first-round matches.
The Lancers played in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Conference and finished with an 8-21 record, including 2-16 in the league.
The school already erased the coaching staff’s bios from the website.
“It was out of nowhere, not even the coaches knew,” Enriques said. “If this decision for CBU was made a long time ago, I think they definitely should have given us some time in advance to plan our future. If the decision was made recently, I think it was a rash decision.
“Either way, there isn’t much the team can do about it. Even the coaches didn’t know about it, and they invested a ton in the program, so it really sucks for them, too.”
BYU-Hawaii announced plans to phase out its entire athletic program three years ago. University of the Pacific gave a year’s notice that men’s volleyball would be dropped after the 2014 season.
Enriques had a team-high 213 digs and 1.92 digs per set average.
Men’s volleyball has a limit of 4.5 scholarships; women’s beach volleyball has three while indoor volleyball has 12 scholarships.
Parker said CBU will honor scholarships for student-athletes affected by the decision.
“I feel really bad for my seniors who only have one year left because it is hard to completely switch schools and classes for one year,” Enriques said. “It also really sucks for the incoming freshmen (who get a scholarship for a year) because they have to figure out where they want to go to school and if they want to pursue volleyball.
“It really sucks that they didn’t give us a warning sooner because now I and a few others have to apply for a transfer the summer before the fall semester, which is really last minute.”
Basically, Enriques is a free agent. Hopefully, he can find a home in the reshuffled MPSF, where his brothers will reside: Evan (Stanford), Avery (Grand Canyon), and Addison (Concordia). Hawaii will ditch the powerful MPSF for the Big West.
Kamehameha coach Guy Enriques recently stepped down after leading the Warriors for 15 years.
His plan was to watch his four sons play libero in the MPSF, preferably against each other. It’s still state history that four brothers have Division I volleyball scholarships at the same time.
But when it comes to second son Emmett, Guy Enriques will have to delay making his travel plans, at least for the time being.
Cal Baptist accepted a move to the WAC in January and slammed home bad news out of the blue on Monday, days later still tough to digest.
“I can vouch for a lot of people when I say we are disappointed about the school’s decision to drop the program,” said Emmett Enriques, a final Lancer men’s volleyball player.
