The idea came to me at a Spelman College basketball game. I was mulling over a problem as I watched our team, the Spelman Jaguars, charge up and down the court. The problem in the winter of 2012 was that our NCAA Division III athletic conference was disintegrating. Our seven-school conference had dwindled to only four, not enough to maintain our conference status. Should we travel further and find another conference to join? Doing so would add expense. I had just learned that there were only 80 students participating in our intercollegiate athletic program, barely enough to cover the seven sports we offered and, to my surprise, the cost of the current program was close to $1 million. I also knew that our wellness program, offering popular activities such as Zumba, aqua aerobics, and yoga, was attracting more than 300 participants each week, yet those offerings were constrained by space availability, often forced to work around the practice schedule of our sports teams.
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