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Post by wcu72 on May 5, 2019 15:12:37 GMT -5
Which athletic facilities at WCU are up to SoCon quality standards?
Meets SoCon quality Basketball, and this volleyball
-to a lesser degree, but lacks many amenities Track & Field - but lacks field house, no indoor track facilities Soccer - lacks field house Softball - lacks field house Tennis - lacks field house
-does not meet SoCon quality Baseball - substandard facility, lacks field house Football - substandard press box, substandard playing surface, no indoor practice facility for all sports
what are your thoughts about athletic facilities?
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Post by catamount87 on May 6, 2019 7:38:41 GMT -5
Too bad we couldn't squeeze a new field house with locker rooms in with the new parking deck that will be in the baseball lot. Shoot, how cool would it have been to have that side of the deck serve as stands, boxes and such.
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Post by Let's be realistic on May 6, 2019 8:41:14 GMT -5
Too bad we couldn't squeeze a new field house with locker rooms in with the new parking deck that will be in the baseball lot. Shoot, how cool would it have been to have that side of the deck serve as stands, boxes and such. There is no vision for athletics coming out of that damn white building where the decisions are made. I'm sure the day is coming when the SoCon asks us to find a new home with the poor facilities we now have. They are willing to tear down and rebuild the dorms build in the early 70's, but say to hell with E.J. Whitmire, I'm amazed we're not still playing basketball in Breeze.
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Post by catamount87 on May 6, 2019 9:25:12 GMT -5
Well the SoCon never asked The Citadel to tear down the visitor's stands. Those stands along with the entrance for visitors was well beyond horrible. Lead paint and the city pretty much forced The Citadel's hand on the issue. So, don't expect the SoCon to say much about EJW.
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Post by wcu72 on May 6, 2019 15:51:31 GMT -5
Some of the facilities are an embarrassment, and the lack of amenities pointed out above is another embarrassment. I've followed WCU for a long time and unfortunately I don't see any changes on the horizon.
to make a change in the fortunes of athletics, it will take a chancellor like ASU's Chancellor Peacock in the early 2000s to emphasize and financially support athletics at WCU, as he did at ASU. I don't think we'll ever get a Peacock type as chancellor at Western, and thus athletics will always scrape by in what ever conference or classification the Catamounts find themselves driven to. I won't be around to see it, but the folks in the white building will succeed in eliminating scholarship football in the next 20 years.
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Post by Wcu cat 7474 on May 10, 2019 4:04:14 GMT -5
I can see more womens sports and soccer and other additional sports being added and an attempt to disband football at Western in the next 10 to 15 years
Will happen at a lot of schools
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Post by wcugrad95 on May 10, 2019 7:40:13 GMT -5
Dropping football in my opinion would mean dropping other sports and not adding new ones (at WCU or any school). Successful or not, the football program funds many of the other programs from the “money games” each year. And because of football, several women’s sports are required to be Title IX compliant. It wouldn’t make any sense to drop football and add others that have no chance of generating revenue.
A drop to non-scholarship football at some places like Presbyterian makes sense, and I know we haven’t had the success in football that any of us want. But we do lead the conference in football attendance so I don’t expect football to be on the chopping block anytime soon (regardless of our record).
As for the facilities, this is a theme covered over and over in topic after topic. We have what is now a pretty good game day experience in football, but except for the new weight room (that came from private donations) everything else is between middle of the road to embarrassing. But it seems the administration doesn’t really care and is leaving it up to the Catamount Club that quite frankly I don’t know how much higher they can realistically go with fund raising.
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Post by wcu72 on May 10, 2019 12:50:54 GMT -5
But we do lead the conference in football attendance so I don’t expect football to be on the chopping block anytime soon (regardless of our record). I'm sure you realize the attendance at WCU is based on expectations. While I don't think he can pull it off, the HC has convinced many win starved Catamount fans that conference championships and playoff games are just around the corner. All we have to do is wait until next year, when we're not so young, or the defense learns the new scheme, or the xyz returns from injuries. It's all a pig-in-the-poke that's being sold out of Cullowhee. Another losing season will have those numbers come crashing down, just like the numbers for the Catamount Club.
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Post by wcu72 on May 10, 2019 12:52:48 GMT -5
We have what is now a pretty good game day experience in football...... Yep, we have everything except the winning part.
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Post by FLCATAMOUNT on May 10, 2019 13:33:41 GMT -5
Dropping football in my opinion would mean dropping other sports and not adding new ones (at WCU or any school). Successful or not, the football program funds many of the other programs from the “money games” each year. And because of football, several women’s sports are required to be Title IX compliant. It wouldn’t make any sense to drop football and add others that have no chance of generating revenue. A drop to non-scholarship football at some places like Presbyterian makes sense, and I know we haven’t had the success in football that any of us want. But we do lead the conference in football attendance so I don’t expect football to be on the chopping block anytime soon (regardless of our record). As for the facilities, this is a theme covered over and over in topic after topic. We have what is now a pretty good game day experience in football, but except for the new weight room (that came from private donations) everything else is between middle of the road to embarrassing. But it seems the administration doesn’t really care and is leaving it up to the Catamount Club that quite frankly I don’t know how much higher they can realistically go with fund raising. Come on man. I get sucked into commenting on the sorry state of athletics at Western but let's be honest with each other. The folks that can do anything about it do not want to have successful athletic programs really. We have had several leader say that athletics and football are the front porch but that is only lip service. Do not get sucked into the hype. I am a youngster compared to many of the old timers and have only been following Catamount Sports closely since about 1980 and I have given thousands of dollars over the years, but it has been and is throwing good money after bad, because the people in charge are academics who do not care. They also obviously do not care if we give or not to athletics. So please everyone stop having any expectation that things are going to change because the last 39 years they have not changed and we just hired a chancellor from a D2 school who does not understand or care about athletics. Please set your expectations low and you will not be disappointed. There will be no infusion of cash into athletics at Western by the administration in my lifetime so why should I give. I am to the point where I don't care because our own school does not care. Just give up and take the "Censored Word" that they shovel us every year. Any thing else is insanity. A 39 year trend is a pattern. Find another school that cares about athletics to pull for so that you can feel good about something.
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