More Budget Cuts Hit UC Irvine Sports : Anteaters: Athletic department lays off two, delays two hirings in trimming $195,000.

Another wave in the budget crisis in UC Irvine’s athletic department has resulted in two layoffs as part of about $195,000 in reductions, Athletic Director Tom Ford said Friday.

Ford announced the layoffs of Irvine’s equipment manager and an administrative assistant Thursday. He said Friday that the vacant position of marketing director will not be filled this year and that the school will delay the hiring of a head trainer. Some planned equipment purchases also have been postponed.

The cuts come on the heels of $526,000 in reductions of the department’s $4 million budget last spring, when Irvine trimmed funding in virtually all of its sports programs and withdrew financial support from five of the school’s 19 sports. Some funding has since been restored to the water polo program.

“What’s hard is now we’re impacting people, where before it was programs,” Ford said. “This points out the seriousness of our financial dilemma.”

Ford said the latest cutbacks are partly in response to a reduction in the amount of money the department will receive from student registration fees, and an expected shortfall in budgeted revenue.

“We were hoping the economy would rebound, but now it looks like it will continue on this way and maybe even dip one more time,” Ford said. “We expect our fund-raising and marketing efforts to fall short.”

Ford said cuts were made now in an effort to comply with a school mandate that the department’s budget be balanced.

“We looked at our forecasted revenue and decided we had better take steps now, before we get too far into the year and there’s no way of cutting,” he said.

Ford said he doesn’t expect further cuts, but said a close watch will be kept on all the sports programs’ budgets, and that another thorough assessment will be made next spring.

A board of directors is being formed for the UC Irvine Athletic Foundation, and Dave Quisling has been chosen president.

Quisling, a real estate developer and the CEO of Drug Prevention Strategies, will head the organization, which is primarily a fund-raising group.