The Ashland University athletic department made scholarship cuts on Thursday in response to the tuition reset that takes effect next year.

Ashland University head football coach Lee Owens, one of three individuals now in charge of athletics at AU, told WRDL reporter Chris Bils the cuts affect every single athletic team on campus.

“Every single financial aid package is going to have to be reworked just because of the price reset,” said Owens. “We’ll all have less scholarships, including football. That’s a given; we know that.”

Despite having less athletic scholarships, Ashland University coaches can now apply academic scholarships to AU athletes without those scholarships counting against the athletic scholarship budget. Previously, academic scholarships did count against the scholarship budget.

Owens also said teams won’t need as many scholarships, since the cost of attending Ashland is less next year. For example, a student athlete who needed half of a scholarship to meet a $20,000 price point this season, will only need a third of a scholarship to meet that same price point next season.

Owens said the changes will affect every sport differently depending on the recruiting situation that sport is in, but he did said Ashland coaches and assistant coaches are doing their best with the new budget.

“We make sure we’re as professional as possible and we not allow this to affect the student athlete that’s here on campus now or the student athlete that we’re trying to recruit to campus,” said Owens.

This news about scholarship cuts comes less than a week after Athletic Director Bill Goldring was relieved of his duties for an undisclosed amount of time. No link between the two stories exists at this time. Stay tuned to 88.9 WRDL and wrdlfm.com for updates on this story.