Coronavirus: Wyoming's Craig Bohl and wife Leia donate $100,000 for scholarships for seniors who lost spring seasons
Wyoming coach Craig Bohl and his wife Leia are helping out Wyoming athletes who want to return for a final spring sports season.
The school announced Friday that the Bohls had donated $100,000 to a scholarship fund for current spring sports seniors who want to return for the 2021 season. With the cancellation of spring sports because of the coronavirus pandemic, the NCAA is not counting the 2020 season as a year of eligibility for spring sports athletes. That means seniors set to play in the canceled 2020 season can come back to school if they want.
"Leia and I have been blessed by our time at Wyoming,” Bohl said in a statement. “This is an opportunity for us to give back to the young people who represent our University so well. Tough times don't last, but tough people do.”
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Wyoming said the estimated scholarship costs for spring sports seniors who want to return would be $70,000. The remainder of the Bohls’ donation will cover food for Wyoming athletes.
"I applaud the Bohls for this commitment," Wyoming athletic director Tom Burman said. "Coach knew how bad I wanted to fund those senior scholarships, but in our current financial situation I couldn't. Craig and Leia are invested in Wyoming like no other head-coaching family in my time here."
Burman announced on Thursday that he was taking a 10 percent pay cut through the end of the season.
Pay cuts and freezes in college athletics may become more and more commonplace in the coming weeks and months. Iowa State said Wednesday that certain athletic department employees and coaches would be taking a temporary pay cut and that bonuses and incentive programs would be suspended. The pay cuts, athletic director Jamie Pollard said, would save the athletic department approximately $3 million.
The NCAA was set to dole out $600 million to member schools from its NCAA tournament revenue. With both the men’s and women’s tournaments canceled, that payout was dropped to a collective $225 million. NCAA president Mark Emmert and other NCAA executives are also taking 20 percent pay cuts.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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