In a sport that enjoys such national popularity, why is it that women's college gymnasts have the fewest number of opportunities in intercollegiate sports? And why is it that gymnasts are being asked to raise the money to continue pursuing the athletics opportunity that is so readily available to most other female sports?

Those questions may sound trivial to some, but a quick look at some data shows that they should be taken very seriously by all.

Even using conservative estimates, gymnasts have the fewest opportunities to continue in college with respect to high-school participation, both in numbers of teams available and in actual participation figures. The discontinuation of four of the 89 programs last year, and therefore 70 roster spots, will further exacerbate the decline in opportunities for 45,000-plus high-school-aged gymnasts.

Over the last three years, the 16 Division III schools that sponsor women's gymnastics have received an average of 300 applications per year. That would amount to 20 additional teams with 15 gymnasts each of first-year students alone. The student-run Collegiate Club National Championships had 192 female gymnasts competing last year, representing 30 colleges and universities, so there is proven interest in the current student population as well.

Yet administrators at the colleges that dropped the sport last year claim that gymnastics is dying. Instead of keeping the opportunities alive for their well-deserving students, they are precipitating the sport's demise by discontinuing their programs or, in three out of the four cases, asking the athletes to come up with more than $4 million to keep the program alive.

Gymnastics will become a difficult sport to sponsor as many teams already are forced to travel to neighboring states to find competition. And, as conference sponsorship decreases, it places the other programs in the conference in peril.

Administrators also fail to realize that they are driving away some of the best students from their campuses. Graduation rates for gymnasts exceed 90 percent, which is far above the all-student rate of 52 percent. In 2000 and 2001, an average of more than 35 percent of gymnasts finished the year with at least a 3.500 grade-point average. The National Collegiate Gymnastics Association (NCGA) awards all-scholastic recognition to the seniors who finish their academic career with a 3.000 or better. In 2002, the NCGA recognized 76.6 percent of their seniors.

And per capita, gymnasts have received more NCAA postgraduate scholarships than any other female sport over the last five years. Gymnasts also have been named NCAA Woman of the Year state winners and top-10 finalists at a per capita rate higher than any other sport. In addition, the 2002 Verizon Academic All-American At-Large University Division Team named eight gymnasts out of the 45 members, including the overall Team Member of the Year.

Given this type of supporting evidence, one would think that college administrators would welcome gymnasts with open arms to their campuses. It is well-documented that women's gymnastics is the most popular sport during the summer Olympics. That alone has helped prompt the National Collegiate Women's Gymnastics Championships to be the only NCAA women's championship televised nationally on a non-cable network.

Yet gymnastics requires ever-changing, high-performance and expensive equipment, as well as highly technical coaching to ensure safety. Because of that, many high schools have been forced to discontinue the sport. Even some states such as Utah, Alabama and Florida have chosen to cut their high-school programs. That has forced some gymnasts to move to different sports such as track and field and swimming and diving.

There also is a direct relationship between the reduction in opportunities to participate in high-school gymnastics and the increase in competitive spirit squads, a collective group the National Federation of State High School Associations shows as 88,561 members strong. It is safe to estimate that at least 10 percent of those athletes would be participating in gymnastics if they had the opportunity.

And while the number of high-school teams has declined, so have the opportunities to continue in college. Even a 54 percent increase in USA Gymnastics membership over the last 10 years and a 37.5 percent increase in the number of private gymnastics clubs has not seemed to matter. Over the last 10 years, the number of teams -- and therefore opportunities for athletes -- has increased in major NCAA female sports by an average of 117 percent. Gymnastics is the only sport for which opportunities have decreased, by more than 10 percent over the last 10 years and by an astonishing 50 percent since 1981.

Hopefully, those numbers will prompt college administrators to follow the lead of schools such as the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, which is adding the sport this year. The evidence is clear that not only is there a huge demand for college gymnastics opportunities, but colleges will be rewarded by providing such opportunities.

The National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches for Women is interested not only in rescuing any of the programs that have been cut this year but in finding new opportunities as well. We urge administrators to refocus on their mission statements and to realize that gymnasts personify the mission academically, athletically and in the manner in which they represent the university.

We have all seen what has happened to men's gymnastics and I fear that women's gymnastics is headed in the same direction. I want to believe that there are administrators out there who care, and if the facts included above are not enough to open some eyes, then our sport may be doomed.

Eduardo Ovalle is the head women's gymnastics coach at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.