All around the world – from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Brighton, England – Ashland’s most international athletic team was busy preparing for the upcoming season. Locally, senior midfielder Alex Johnson had finished up a run and was planning to go play soccer later in the day when he received a text from men’s soccer head coach Jon Freeman.

The mass text to all of the players said that Freeman had some sad news that would affect everyone on the team, and to call him at their earliest convenience.

“I was thinking that someone on the team was hurt or maybe even worse,” Johnson said.

What Freeman had to say might have been even more shocking.

There will be no 2013 season for Ashland men’s soccer. In fact, there may never be another season. In a statement released Wednesday, the school said it has terminated the program effective immediately.

“It grieves me deeply to make this very difficult decision. I feel badly for our student-athletes, their families and our coaches,” Goldring said in the statement. “However, these are the financial and equity realities that are being faced by athletic departments across the country.”

Players have been left scrambling to find a school that will accept a late transfer or, worse, realizing that their days playing the game that they love are over. Fifth-year senior captain and goalkeeper Justin Nolan will have to finish his last academic semester without putting on the captain’s armband or celebrating his Senior Day at Ferguson Field.

“It’s really saddening because it’s so sudden,” he said. “It’s like one day you’re fit and everything’s set for next year and then you find out you’re not even going to have a next year.”

Within the men’s soccer ranks, there were no warning signs from anyone at Ashland that cutting the program was even a possibility. Both Johnson and junior defender Max Rohda said the first indication came when another coach in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference recently asked someone within the program why the team had taken them off the schedule.

That was before the athletic office informed Freeman on Tuesday morning that the university had decided to cut the men’s soccer program.

“If that’s what happened I feel bad about it,” Goldring said Wednesday. “But it doesn’t change the decision or how it came about. It’s a terrible thing for everyone involved with it, but it’s a reality.”

More than anything else, the timing of the announcement has left players like Nolan, Johnson and Rohda shaking their heads.

“How can they do this? This has obviously been in the works for a little while,” Johnson.

There are also those players that were set to come to the program in 2013. Freshman Andreas Kolaczko is a highly touted player out of Saint Ignatius who is trying to come to terms with the fact that he no longer has a team to play for in the fall.

“It’s just a lot to comprehend and to deal with,” he said. “I’ll probably end up transferring. I’m not sure where or when, but it’s just something that I didn’t want to experience. Ashland left a sour taste in my mouth.”

Kolaczko has already started contacting coaches and is weighing Oberlin, Cleveland State, Notre Dame College, Walsh and Findlay as options, but it is so late that many schools no longer have scholarship money available.

As for the impact cutting the program will have on the massive deficit AU currently faces, many of the upperclassmen on the team find it hard to believe they were the prime target.

According to Johnson, the team was already on a minuscule budget that had them eating Little Caesar’s pizza for dinner on road trips and wearing the same practice socks year after year. He finds it more likely the program was the first to go because of the string of discipline issues that have been associated with it.

“I think they said, ‘To hell with this team,’” he said. “’We’re done dealing with any problems that they bring.’”

Goldring maintained that the decision was strictly financial and that dropping men’s soccer was the logical choice in order to keep all of the other sports and allow them the best chance at success. He also said that no other sports are in danger of being cut.

“Part of the thinking here was that if we in fact had to remove one of our teams, that would ensure that our other teams would still perform at a championship level,” he said.

Whatever the reason, there is no denying that the group got results on the pitch. The Eagles won the GLIAC regular season and tournament championships in 2010, earning a third-straight NCAA tournament appearance in the process. Last year, they beat top-ranked Gannon at home, 3-1, on Oct. 4.

They were also a popular group off the field, something that was made obvious by the immediate response they got on social media when the news broke that the program had been cut.

“It’s just a lot of respect coming from other teams and coming from the student body,” Nolan said. “The students can recognize right from wrong and really see what’s wrong about the situation.”

The beautiful stadium that was built as part of the Dwight Schar Athletic Complex in 2010 for track and field and soccer – including a brand new press box – will be hauntingly empty on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons come August. For now, the players and coaches are just trying face the harsh reality.

“I’m deeply saddened by the decision to cut the men’s soccer program,” Freeman said. “This program has meant a whole lot to me and a whole lot to a lot of our current players and former players. It’s going to be tough knowing that I won’t be able to coach them next year. I’m doing everything in my power in order to help them out to find other places to play and working through this process. It’s very difficult and I just have a very heavy heart right now.”

AU will honor the financial aid commitments for the student-athletes and assist them in finding other institutions. Players in good academic standing will be allowed to transfer immediately without missing playing time.