PURCHASE, N.Y. – Manhattanville College announced today that it has eliminated men's and women's varsity tennis from its athletic offerings. 
 
According to Athletic Director Keith Levinthal, many factors went into the difficult decision, which was unanimously approved by the school's Athletics Advisory Board last week. A major issue was a vote by the Middle Atlantic Conferences operations committee before the start of the spring season to mandate hard courts for all conference matches. This decision would force Manhattanville to abandon its six on-campus Har-Tru courts and instead search for off-campus tennis facilities.
 
The program's courts were originally converted from hard courts to Har-Tru in 1997 to accommodate the hosting of the Citibank Championships, a stop on the International ATP Champions Tour. The school served as host of the event for three years from 1997-99 and saw greats such as John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg grace the Manhattanville Courts, including Connors overcoming Borg in the final to win the first event held at Manhattanville in 1997.
 
The programs were also adversely affected by the conference's decision to move women's tennis to a spring sport for the 2010-11 season. 
  
The men's program finished the 2011-12 season with a 3-9 (3-2 Freedom) record, while the women's team finished the year 2-9 (0-5 Freedom).

Despite this decision, Manhattanville's Athletic Department still boasts 20 vibrant and highly competitive Division III varsity sports, a figure that ranks second among the eight Freedom Conference institutions and seventh among the 18 schools making up the Middle Atlantic Conferences. In that last three years alone, the school has produced six All-Americans, two Academic All-America selections, seven conference tournament championships and seven appearances in the NCAA Tournament.