Pictured: Pedro Franca and Chris Faenge

SBCC plans to suspend the Men's Tennis program following the 2013 season. Santa Barbara City College considers intercollegiate athletics as an academic success program. Participation in intercollegiate athletics is part of a comprehensive program that ultimately leads to increased access to opportunities. The nature of intercollegiate athletics is dynamic and constantly changing. For the past decade, local interest in men's tennis has been in significant decline. Moreover, metrics of student success within intercollegiate athletics, such as retention, graduation rates, and transfer rates have been disproportionately lower for men's tennis as compared to students in other intercollegiate offerings. Since athletics is a student success program, these are the metrics with which SBCC Athletics judges the success of an intercollegiate program.  With these factors in mind, SBCC Athletics is currently planning to suspend men's tennis at the conclusion of the Spring 2013 season.

THIS IS WHERE WE NEED YOUR HELP. CLICK THIS LINK AND SIGN A PETITION created by Jack Sanford. Thank you. Please share, post tweet and retweet help us save the sport we love. The petition reads as follows.

The suspension is based upon unsubstantiated data and the present men's tennis team is a vibrant and dynamic program with 14 team members, a committed coach and an active conference. The enrollment at SBCC is 50 -50 males and females. The athletic programs at present consist of 8 men's sports and 8 women's sports if the men's tennis team is suspended and women's swimming and water polo are added, which they will be, the ratio will become 7 men's sports and 10 women's sports. SBCC was just awarded the #1 community college in the United States and the men's tennis team was included in that award so why suspend it. (Football is not included in these ratios because there is no comparable activity for women)