Colleges -- As Budget Deficit Grows, UCLA Cuts Three Sports

LOS ANGELES - UCLA will eliminate men's swimming and the men's and women's gymnastics varsity programs after the 1993-94 school year, to ease a sports budget deficit that has reached $900,000.

"UCLA's athletic program is part of a proud university tradition, and it saddens me to have to eliminate these programs," Chancellor Charles E. Young said yesterday. "But there simply are insufficient resources to continue to operate a program of the scope we had in the past."

Athletic Director Peter Dalis said that continuing the men's swimming and the two gymnastic programs would lead to a projected athletic deficit of about $9 million by the year 2000.

The men's swimming program last won an NCAA championship in 1982, but team members won seven gold medals in the past three Olympics.

The men's gymnastics team won two NCAA titles in the 1980s, and three UCLA performers were on the USA's gold medal team champions in the 1984 Olympics, when UCLA's Pauley Pavilion was the site of the gymnastics competition. The women's gymnasts at UCLA finished fourth in the NCAA championship this past year.

UCLA also has added women's soccer to its varsity athletic program beginning in the coming school year.

Adding women's soccer and eliminating men's swimming are among ongoing moves to equalize spending on men's and women's athletics at UCLA.

GENDER EQUITY

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - All sides have something to like and something not to like in the final recommendations of the NCAA's gender equity task force, which seems certain to create lively debate at January's convention.

Most of the panel's recommendations will be placed on the convention agenda for schools to vote on by the NCAA Council, NCAA President Joseph Crowley said.

The report stopped short of demanding immediate, equal distribution of money and resources between men's and women's athletics.

Some feared football would absorb heavy cuts if strict proportionality mandated the same distribution of athletic resources among men and women.

NOTES

-- Alabama Athletic Director Hootie Ingram said that Alabama-Birmingham basketball Coach Gene Bartow's claims about alleged NCAA rules violations at Alabama and a possible threat on his life sound "kind of way out." Bartow's allegations, made in a 1991 letter, said that four ex-Alabama players told him of rules violations after transferring to Alabama-Birmingham.

-- A University of Akron basketball player and the son of basketball Coach Coleman Crawford are among four students facing drug and weapons charges. A preliminary hearing is set for Monday in Barberton Municipal Court for player Eddie Kellum, 19; William Crawford, 20; Brian Mauzy, 21; and Forrest Adams, 24, who are all charged with aggravated drug trafficking and possession of concealed weapons.