Is Selma University dropping its baseball program, along with the men’s and women’s basketball programs, and athletic department?
Sources tell us that the administration is at odds with the education department over federal financial assistance and that the athletic shutdown is already a done deal.
Coach Adrian Holloway, who as baseball coach and athletic director, has yet to be officially told of the administrative decision to terminate its athletic program. However, a number of players have already begun the process of transferring to other schools. As well, two different sources have indicated that the dorms and cafeteria have already closed.
Coach Holloway stated that the business office has never provided the athletic program with a budget his entire time as the head coach and athletic director. Nonetheless, Selma this past season, made its ninth straight playoff appearance and was eliminated (going 1-2) in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA) Small School World Series this past May.
At the end of this past season, as the team prepared for its final three games on the road, they sat on a bus waiting to travel to Voorhees, South Carolina for more than four hours at 4:00 in the morning, only to be told by the business office, four hours later, they could not make the trip. The team players, family, and donors then pitched in sending Selma to its scheduled game.
Holloway, who has been at the helm for the past seven seasons, after being hired in July 2013, has a 117-59 career record, has taken the program to six straight post season tournaments and had made Selma baseball an HBCU baseball powerhouse. He had the program ranked in Black College Nines HBCU Baseball Top 10 Poll under his tenure and nationally ranked every year with three small college World Series appearance, including a final four appearance in 2018. Selma was a game away from the national title game that year.
Selma’s elimination of baseball would be the fourth program to close its doors recently. Concordia College in Alabama cut its program at the end of the 2017 season. St. Augustine’s University did likewise just before the start of the 2018 season and Winston Salem State, this past March, announced it would shut down baseball and replace it with golf in order to restructure its budget.