Dan Zalewski III
Sports Editor

Millersville’s Student Senate met this past Thursday in order to discuss and vote on a proposition aimed at providing support to Millersville Athletic programs.

The Post Season Support Plan, better known as PSSP, is an initiative created by Student Senate President Justin Pierre and Student-Athlete Advisory Committee President Raeann Buskey to alleviate the struggle of budgeting for postseason play.

The difficulty comes from the natural unpredictability of sports. It is nearly impossible to predict which of Millersville’s nineteen sports programs will reach postseason play and how far those qualifying programs will go.

This dilemma became even more apparent after the wide sweeping success of Millersville’s spring sports programs. For the first time in school history, each spring sports program qualified for some level of postseason play, including the first ever postseason appearance by the women’s softball team in program history.

The total expense for these postseason appearances is no easy amount to fundraise. Last year the Athletic department spent over $128,000 on postseason play.

Another large factor is the total success of the team. The men’s baseball team had the greatest season in program history this past spring making it to the Division 2 World Series. Such success racked up over $83,000 in total expenses for the Athletic department.

PSSP steps in here to help alleviate this expense.

PSSP aimed to create a fund that would be available to the Athletic department to pull from in order to pay for postseason expenses. The fund would only be allowed to be used for postseason expenses such as travel and hotel fare among other required expenses.

Knowledge of PSSP spread through the athletes of the college. When the meeting was called to order, the entire meeting room was filled with many of the athletes and coaches of Millersville.

The proposed fund wouldn’t be big enough to cover all the expense that could occur, but cover a lot of the space that the Athletic department could come up short on. PSSP calls for $40,000 to be made available to the Athletic department this year. Any amount of that $40,000 that isn’t used this year will then roll over to the next year, where the fund will be replenished up to $60,000. Then each year following, the fund will be replenished to $60,000.

During the discussion many athletes and coaches spoke very positively about the proposal and described how the passing of the proposal would help our athletic programs.

The proposal was not met with unanimous support though. Some individuals at the meeting spoke out about the proposal’s lack of inclusion of club sports teams while others thought that the proposed fund was too large.

After an hour of discussion and concern the bill passed to the excitement of the athletes in attendance.

“I [was] ecstatic,” said Buskey, “I knew there was so much pride in the room for not only athletics but for the school as a whole”.

Student Senate President Justin Pierre was also proud of Senate’s accomplishment. “I’m elated. The idea that Senate is getting the idea that we can support our athletes and be [on a] one Marauder basis [with our] students,” said Pierre, “Really proud”.