Christopher Newport University, a Division III school in Newport News, Va., has agreed to reinstate its varsity co-ed sailing team less than three months after announcing its discontinuation.
The move, which appears to mark the first known reinstatement of a university’s co-ed varsity sports program, follows a class-action threat by three female sailors, who argued the program’s elimination would further exacerbate the university’s alleged noncompliance with federal gender-equity law.
In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford downgraded its co-ed varsity sailing program to club status while Brown elevated its club to varsity.
Under a settlement agreement signed July 6, Christopher Newport agreed to hiring a full-time interim head coach and assistant and maintain the program through at least August 2030. It also committed to applying $150,000 of funds that had been raised for the program to the team’s operating expenses over the coming years.
Christopher Newport is one of roughly three dozen institutions that sponsor varsity sailing, which is not recognized as an NCAA sport and is instead governed by the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association of North America (ICSA). The university had cited financial challenges when it announced in March it would discontinue the half-century-old program. Sailing began at Christopher Newport as a club in the early 1970s before gaining varsity status in 1980. The elimination followed an earlier decision to end female sailors’ participation in women’s-only regattas.
