UCLA Keeps Gymnastics, Adds Women’s Water Polo

In a move designed to bring UCLA closer to compliance with federal guidelines mandating gender equity, the school will maintain its women’s gymnastics program and add women’s water polo as an intercollegiate sport in the 1994-95 academic year, the school announced Monday.

In addition, UCLA will add another women’s sport by 1997, but school officials would not comment on which one. Some possibilities are lacrosse, crew and fencing.

The NCAA holds a championship event for men’s water polo, but not women’s. There are no intercollegiate water polo programs at local campuses, so UCLA likely will compete against club teams.

But women’s water polo is emerging. It has an outside chance of becoming an Olympic sport in 1996 and is expected to be added to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

UCLA had planned to drop women’s gymnastics along with men’s gymnastics and men’s swimming after this academic year because of an athletic department budget deficit. But administrators later suspended their decision to cut women’s gymnastics after being threatened with a gender-equity lawsuit. Monday’s announcement makes it official that women’s gymnastics will stay.