"Construction of a basketball practice court if the current one is relocated from the football-focused Leon Moncla Indoor Practice Facility"
I think this is a great idea.
This would allow for the new "much larger" weight room to be created in current structure. Which would still be utilized by the basketball team and all other sports programs, without the athletes feeling like they were trespassing through football territory to get there.
I would spend any money intended for a new basketball practice venue, on making Blackham a great depth perception place to practice.
I would also give the basketball program complete control of Blackham and is use dates as a way of raising funds for the program.
Reading between the lines it looks like a good way to reshuffle the order of improvements. Appears the trains with more monentum will see upgrades first.
Basketball leaders want a new practice court to be built adjacent to and connected to the Dome. There are a lot of reasons for this One benefit would be access to the showers and locker rooms of the Dome. They don't have those now at Leon Moncla. Another major benefit would be the ability to practice on the dome floor more frequently. Also, the Dome needs to be configured to make it more basketball friendly. Filling in the area behind the goals and moving as many people as possible to the lower level would provide a cozier atmosphere and more of a true homecourt advantage. Doing all this of course is a multimillion dollar endeavor. There are no plans to use Blackham for basketball at this time. In fact a deal may be in the works for that facility to be used in a non athletic fashion.
I talked to Kevin Figaro about showers at Blackham, he said they used to bus to the athletic complex to shower after games.
As a temp measure to get the BB court converted to a weight room before summer and still have a place to practice BB (at Blackham) they could get one of these: Mobile Shower Trailer for Sale.
It should NEVER have taken all of this (angry fan base...conference realignment snafu) for "the powers that be" to realize they were not focused and committed to "a plan". But...the good to come out of this is that they are getting there now.
Results will come if a commitment is made and I think now that the commitment is coming from the President and RCAF board members. The fans are there and stand ready to tender the initiative with $??
This President is going to have to prove his commitment to continue to get money from this fan and it's going to take a lot more than words and empty promises on his part. I am in Missouri mode now...Show me.
For starter's let's see what how he distributes the pain on the next round of budget cuts. In fact, if he wants to send an immediate message he could go back and rescind his $1.5 MM cut to athletics and distribute that more equitably.
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