Los Medanos College offers a broad variety of sports for both men and women. It is time for the Los Medanos College athletics program to expand and offer more sports variety for students.

The athletic department currently offers four women’s sports soccer, volleyball, basketball, and softball. The program offers only three men’s sports football, basketball, and baseball.

Los Medanos College athletics competes in the Bay Valley Conference (BVC) in the California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA). As an association, the CCCAA offers 12 different sports for each gender. On the men’s side, the association offers the following sports: baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, swim and dive, tennis, track and field, volleyball, water polo, and wrestling.

For the women’s side, the CCCAA offers the following sports: badminton, basketball, beach volleyball, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, swim and dive, tennis, track and field, volleyball, and water polo. The only sports that differ are football and wrestling for the men, as well as badminton and beach volleyball for the women.

As someone who enjoys sports and is an aspiring sports journalist, looking at the catalog of sports in the CCCAA, creates the question “Why aren’t the same sports offered here?” The list looks quite appealing and I’d personally love to cover some of the sports that aren’t currently offered at LMC.

There are many talented athletes in local high schools who play in the Bay Valley Athletic League (BVAL) and the East Bay Athletic League (EBAL). The local high school conferences are very competitive and student athletes would most likely adapt to community college-level athletics without much difficulty.

Recruiting from the local high school wouldn’t be too difficult since Los Medanos College athletics is a proven title-winning program. Most recently, women’s soccer, volleyball, and baseball all won BVC conference titles. The winning mentality comes from these programs. It wouldn’t take much for the new programs to maintain that same mentality with the guidance of Athletic Director, Richard Villegas, who also serves as head coach of the women’s basketball team.

With awards and recognitions increasing every season, the recruiting pool of athletes will acknowledge the success of LMC athletics and be drawn into the programs that are offered by the college.

The Los Medanos College Athletics program was recently awarded the inaugural BVC Commissioner’s Cup, an award given to the athletic program with the highest overall GPA and positioning in the conference standings at the end of the season. Los Medanos College athletics had a combined GPA of 3.1.

Should the athletic program be expanded to offer more sports, those same programs would benefit when it comes to recruiting new student athletes. Knowing that the athletics department supports student athletes outside of sports would make possible recruits acknowledge that their education matters, even while practicing the sports they love.

Los Medanos College should expand its athletics department solely due to the fact that the current athletic programs have been doing very well under the lead of Athletic Director Richard Villegas. It comes to a point where you can only prove so much with what you’ve got, that you have to look for new ways to impress the public audience. This is the case for the LMC Athletics they have to introduce more sports to continue proving that they are among the top athletic programs in the BVC.