Swimming through some thoughts
If you woke up like me this morning, opened your front door, and walked barefoot across cold, wet (recently sprinklered) cement to get to your newspaper -- which for some reason is always left as far as humanly possible from my front door -- then you may have noticed this story.
Work is set to start later this year on Fresno State's new, $7.5 million aquatics center. We've known for a while this was in the campus master plan, but the fact that it's happening this soon, one year after women's swimming & diving was reinstated at Fresno State, is somewhat of a surprise...albeit a pleasant one. The North Gym pool is greatly outdated, and not wow-factor enough or large enough for a university like Fresno State.
Problem is, this announcement is coming just one year after women's lacrosse was born at the university, and ground also broke on a new women's soccer/lacrosse stadium smack dab in the middle of the greatest tailgate spot in the West -- the Red Lot on Cedar & Barstow. When announcement came that lacrosse was the school's newest sport, many were scratching heads as to why. Some even argued the school should have started a women's water polo program instead with hordes of local talent available and absolutely zero local talent in lacrosse.
The biggest argument against that was that Fresno State would then have to build a new aquatics center. Well, here it is. So is Fresno State planning to add another women's sport to maximize use of what will be a sparkling new facility? Or maybe even (do I dare think it?) a men's team?
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Men's soccer, Men's Polo...two sports which, when we had teams, were usually ranked. After all the Title IX crap, I don't see either happening.
ReplyDeleteI'm thrilled that they're going to stop playing Soccer on the field at Bulldog Stadium. Losing the tailgating will suck, and make it more of an elitist event, but the field will be nice come November.
ReplyDeleteGreat point PZ about men's soccer and polo. Heck I remember growing up and seeing the men's soccer team with legit shots at a national title and ranked in the top 5. And the water polo talent (boys and girls) around here is amazing.
ReplyDeleteJoshua, good point on the condition of the playing field...that's been a real problem lately. My main complaint is where they decided to put the lacrosse/soccer stadium. The White Lot would have been a better location, or better yet next to Lot Q on the corner of Cedar & Barstow that is relatively undeveloped.
Another thing to watch for, the aquatics center is being built near the softball stadium and will take out a huge chunk of parking there (which is also where intraumural flag football, softball and soccer is played). I've already heard complaints about that too...
You're never gonna please everyone, but we have to make sure the higher ups in the athletic dept. (who are often from out of the area) know and understand traditions that the fans, students and alumni love. Changing Timeout's look a few years back was nonsense and ended up a waste of money. And building over half of the Red Lot is nonsense too.