Last month, McGill University announced that it was cutting 25 of its 44 intercollegiate sports teams across 15 different sports, including women’s rugby, women’s field hockey, men’s volleyball and track and field.The Globe and Mail

Alex Hutchinson’s most recent book is The Explorer’s Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map.

As soon as I arrived at the University of Cambridge as a grad student in the fall of 1997, I sought out the track coach. I’d just graduated from McGill University, and had gone on that summer to qualify for the World University Games in Sicily. I was serious about running. So I was surprised and a bit nonplussed to discover that the Cambridge coach was, in fact, an undergraduate who had been elected by his teammates as that year’s “training secretary.”

Cambridge’s track team dates back to 1857, and over the decades it has produced dozens of Olympians. It, too, is serious about running. But it’s entirely student-run. Alongside the training secretary, other team members take responsibility for ordering uniforms, making travel arrangements, hosting meets, raising money and so on.

It’s a quirky approach, but one that I’ve come to believe offers some valuable – and possibly existential – lessons for Canadian institutions as they grapple with the rapidly changing landscape of university sports.

Last month, McGill announced that it was cutting 25 of its 44 intercollegiate sports teams across 15 different sports, including women’s rugby, women’s field hockey, men’s volleyball – and my beloved track and field squad. That cutbacks were coming surprised no one: McGill is projecting to lose $185-million in revenue over the next four years as it grapples with radical changes in the Quebec government’s support for English universities in the province. If I had to choose between physics labs and long-jump pits, I’d prioritize the former too.

© The Globe and Mail