Georgia Perimeter College has suspended recruiting for all eight of its athletic teams and likely will not field any athletic teams next year.

The recruitment decision was made earlier this week by GPC’s interim president, Rob Watts, following the Jan.6 announcement of the University System Georgia’s plans to consolidate Georgia Perimeter with Georgia State University.

Although recruiting occurs year-round, many students typically sign their college commitments in the spring, says Alfred Barney, GPC’s athletic director and men’s basketball coach. Affected sports are men’s and women’s basketball, soccer and tennis plus softball and baseball.

Watts made the announcement during the question-and-answer session of GPC’s town hall meeting Jan. 13.

“My office and the athletic director’s office have been inundated with phone calls from parents of students who have been recruited right now to play for us next year,” Watts said.

“We found we could not be fair to students and their parents because we could not look them in the eye and say we will have a team two years from now,” Watts said. “And we cannot be fair to the student athlete if that student athlete is not going to get a chance to play. So I have suspended recruiting for next year for sports. “

Watts noted that 86 student freshman athletes on scholarship will get a letter stating that their scholarships will be honored through their eligibility if they want to stay at GPC and complete their degrees. “Or if they want to go off and play somewhere else and not sit out a year, we will release them so they can play immediately,” he said.

Currently, the school has 150 athletes participating in all sports, according to Barney.

GPC’s baseball, softball, tennis and basketball programs will finish their spring seasons, Barney says. However, because of the number of freshmen students who likely will be offered the option to leave, he anticipates that there will be no GPC team sports offered during the 2015-16 academic year. 

For information on upcoming Jaguar games, go to www.gpc.edu/athletics