Cal Poly football coaches aren’t renewing the scholarship of a soon-to-be father

This is a cross-published piece with Mustang News, more information can be found here.

Before going to a celebratory dinner in Morro Bay, Sidney Alter felt a strange feeling in her stomach. It was Oct. 12, her 21st birthday. She grabbed the most expensive pregnancy test she could find, and to her surprise, the results were positive. Alter had a lifelong dream of motherhood and was filled with excitement. 

“I was told I would never be able to conceive on my own,” she said.

Nervous to break the news to her boyfriend and soon-to-be father, she sat former Cal Poly football player Dominick McCormack down on her bed.

“I was really thankful and proud to share that moment with him,” Alter expressed.

On his girlfriend’s bed, McCormack was flooded with fear. The future he envisioned, filled with football games and academic pursuits, suddenly felt uncertain.

He played football for Cal Poly for the past three years, and the upcoming 2024 season will mark the first one he will not be playing with the university.

“There was a lot of confusion,” McCormack recalled. “Sadness and kind of hurt and betrayal.”

This felt like a decision out of his hands. During his exit meeting following the end of the 2023 season, his coaches informed him of the nonrenewal of his scholarship and his removal from the team. 

McCormack felt both surprised and hurt by his coaches. 

“That was my position coach and the [defensive coordinator] coach vonAppen,” McCormack said. “He’s actually the one who recruited me out of high school to come here.”

According to McCormack, vonAppen talked to him about going to the NFL and having a bright future in football.

“I don’t necessarily know if I would qualify myself as a great player but I definitely have a great work ethic,” McCormack said. “If I were given the opportunity to be coached and change what I needed to fix I’m the type of person to be able to do that.”

This past season, he felt like his coaches did not allow him to show his potential.

“Coaches kinda gave up on me, and two weeks into the season I wasn’t even really getting coached up on what to fix anymore,” McCormack said.

McCormack called his mother, Kayla Lawrence, to tell her the news, explaining that his coaches would not look him in the eyes as they continually apologized.

“It broke my heart,” Lawrence said. “Especially knowing that’s his senior year.”

She said her family would buy around 10 season tickets every year.

“That’s the whole reason why he’s in college,” Lawrence said. “He’s a year away from getting his bachelor’s. That’s what he needs to have a good job in life these days, and you’re going to take that from him. Having a baby is not going to change his focus.”

McCormack mentioned he is now working three jobs in the City of San Luis Obispo, Avila and Santa Maria and is trying to save money for his growing family.

McCormack and Lawrence said receiving a full-ride scholarship is the only way he could afford to attend a four-year university.

“I thought it would be a nice way to get into college and continue my education,” McCormack said. “Cal Poly was the only school that took a chance on me and offered.”

McCormack’s student-athlete scholarship covered his housing and food entirely. According to his mom, whatever the scholarship didn’t cover, his financial aid did. 

“It’s just me,” Lawrence said. “Me being a single mom, and I don’t make any money, I can’t help him, which sucks.”

On Dec. 6, 2022, Cal Poly Football announced Paul Wulff as the program’s new head coach, replacing former head coach Beau Baldwin. Baldwin, who departed to take the offensive coordinator position at Arizona State, coached McCormack during his freshman and sophomore years.

“McCormack is a very determined young man,” Baldwin said on McCormack’s GoPoly.com profile. “He grinds in the classroom, grinds in the weight room and carries a 4.0 GPA, so his work ethic is at an incredibly high level.”

According to Wulff, coaches usually meet with the players a couple of times a year for one-on-one meetings.

He explained that deciding not to renew an athlete’s scholarship involves a process where coaches evaluate a player’s performance and other factors to determine what is best for the program.

“We make those really hard, tough decisions that nobody wants to make,” Wulff said. “Usually it’s a process that an athlete in your program for a couple years. At that point, you have younger players that have bypassed them and they’re not really in the future plans.”

Wulff emphasized that all decisions are made based on the rules of the NCAA and Cal Poly.

“It’s a competitive world and all we’re trying to do is to do the best for each sport and the program,” Wulff said.

Lawrence said the staff’s reasoning for cutting her son from the team doesn’t make sense.

“There’s kids on the team that have scholarships that don’t even play, that have never even touched a field and you’re gonna cut him, and he’s been starting,” Lawrence said.

He played ten games with four starts as a freshman, according to GoPoly.com.

According to McCormack, as a sophomore, he had an injury for the first half of the season but started in every game once recovered.

In the 2022 season, he played and started in six games, where he made 29 total tackles.

McCormack said he will keep his scholarship for the remainder of the 2023-24 academic year. He has received financial aid since arriving at Cal Poly in 2020 as a kinesiology major.

During a biology course in McCormack’s freshman year, he met Sidney Alter, who would soon become his girlfriend and, later, the mother of their child.

Moving forward, McCormack plans to move back to his hometown, Visalia, CA, with Alter to raise their baby together. He does not plan on attending Cal Poly for his senior year.

“We wouldn’t be able to afford buying or renting a one-bedroom bathroom apartment out here,” McCormack said.

After meeting the application requirements, he wants to transfer into a nursing program. This might mean transferring to a community college in Visalia or Fresno State University.

Their baby girl is due in June 2024. 

Mustang News originally reached out to Cal Poly athletics for comment, but was denied due to team policy. A separate interview was conducted with Cal Poly head football coach Paul Wulff.

Correction: Mustang News removed a comment that could not be verified by the source it referenced.