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 The North Gym pool is greatly outdated, and not wow-factor enough or large enough for a university like Fresno State.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?