Irvine Budget Includes No Funding for Water Polo, Four Other Sports : Colleges: No programs are dropped, but five must become self-supporting and all suffer some budget cuts.

Neither baseball nor any of UC Irvine’s 18 other sports will be dropped in order to solve an athletic department budget crisis, the school announced Wednesday.

But five sports--including a water polo program that has won three national championships--will have to support themselves without any funds from the university.

Men’s soccer, men’s volleyball, crew and sailing also will have to operate entirely on funds the programs raise themselves, Athletic Director Tom Ford said.

None of the school’s 19 sports escaped without cuts as the department balanced its books by slicing $526,000 out of a $4-million budget.

Water polo Coach Ted Newland, who recently pledged $20,000 of his own money to his team and accepted early retirement while planning to coach on a part-timer’s salary, now must raise $37,800 to keep his team afloat.

“This hurts, having been there 25 years, paid my dues and been pretty damn successful,” Newland said.

Newland said that the team requires $54,800 for scholarships and an operating budget covering such expenses as team travel, and that an existing $17,000 diminishes the amount he must raise.

“Basically, they’ve dropped the sport. I guess what they’ll do for me is they’ll sign the NCAA forms,” he said. “I get absolutely no funding, from the paper I use to the telephone.”

Bill Ashen, coach of the men’s volleyball team, and Derek Lawther, men’s soccer coach, said they were confident they can raise money to replace the lost funding.

Ford and other university officials once thought the school would drop as many as five sports. Baseball, with a budget of $200,000, was considered a likely target.

“We were on our death bed,” said Mike Gerakos, coach of a baseball team that wore black armbands during the final game of the season.

“It was like we were down by a lot of runs, with two outs and two strikes, with a great pitcher throwing against us. But we fought off a lot of pitches and finally got a base hit to keep going.”

Gerakos said the uncertainty of the past two weeks has been draining.

“I can tell you what’s on TV at 3 or 4 a.m.,” he said.

Speculation that the program would be discontinued probably cost Irvine two of its four recruits. Gerakos said two players, including infielder Gerad Cawhorn of Golden West College, have wavered on their commitments, and Irvine will not seek to hold them to those commitments.

Ford said he is hopeful that the financial crunch will prove temporary. It has been caused largely by the state budget crisis and a shortfall in basketball receipts resulting from two poor seasons. The school also is currently paying two men’s and women’s basketball staffs because of turnover in those positions.

“The good news is all our sports will remain intact,” Ford said. “We will not eliminate programs.”

Ford said the department will actively support fund-raising efforts of the five newly independent sports, and that they will remain under school control.

Withdrawing funding from the five sports accounted for about a quarter of the more than half-million in cuts, Ford said. Other teams will receive cuts in many areas, particularly travel.

The men’s basketball team, scheduled to play a road game against Utah, a top-20 team last season, has withdrawn from that commitment for the upcoming season in a move that could bolster the team’s record as well as its ledger.

Ford stressed the need for more fund-raising. The department has raised less than $300,000 this year, while shooting for a record goal of $600,000.

Ford said efforts are under way to establish a golf driving range on campus to generate money for athletics, and that such a facility could produce from $300,000 to $500,000 a year.

“These have been most difficult decisions,” he said. “We view this as, hopefully, a temporary situation.”