Football Alum Matt Purdy Tries to Save Hawkeye Sports

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Having recorded three top-10 times in school history last season as a University of Iowa freshman swimmer, Ryan Purdy was prepared to captain the team as a sophomore. Then, suddenly, there was no team. One of four sports cut in August by the university, citing coronavirus-related revenue losses, Iowa swimming and diving is drowning. But it may have a lifeline in Matt Purdy, Ryan's father and a former offensive lineman who captained the Iowa football team in the 1990s under legendary coach Hayden Fry. The elder Purdy has emerged as the voice of Save Hawkeye Sports, an effort to not only spare his son's program, but men's tennis, men's gymnastics and women's swim/dive, too. Public response through September had encouraged Purdy and other parents and alumni to propose a new funding model to help ensure the sustainability of non-revenue collegiate sports nationwide. AB senior editor Paul Steinbach asked Matt, the head varsity football coach and assistant AD at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Ill., to assess the state of athletics at his alma mater.

Does Ryan's freshman success make this all the harder to deal with?
What built upon it even more was the way he approached COVID here after they sent him home. He was fortunate enough to find somebody who had a connection to an outdoor, 25-yard, three-lane pool that was heated, so he was out swimming in the snow. He was out pushing his car. He went true "Rocky IV." We had TRX straps in the garage. We bought heaters. We bought lights. We did everything possible. Then he gets elected captain. He called us in a very prideful moment and said they had bumped up his scholarship. This was only a couple weeks before the cut happened, so we were very, very excited because he had trained so hard and was kind of breaking the surface of greatness. He has great goals. This past year, he was just off the Olympic trial cut coming out of the season. He was a 10th of a second off the 200 back and two 10ths off the 100 back, so looking at it, he would have been at the Olympic trials this past summer, and still obviously has that aspiration going forward. But there were a lot of great things that came out of last year as an Iowa swimmer.

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