Spacing Out
By Bob Weiner

Athletic home away from home: The Northeast Football Conference champion Great Danes will wage their 2003 campaign out of this newly renovated locker room. NEC Coach of the Year Bob Ford is joined by Geir Gudmundsen (79) of Saugerties, N.Y., Justin Sands (59) of Boyertown, Pa., and Lamar Williams (98) of New Rochelle, N.Y. The locker room project was accomplished primarily with private funds.

Renovation of the football locker room is only stage one of a comprehensive, long-range plan to overhaul the University at Albany’s athletic program infrastructure. The $150,000 project, accomplished predominantly with private funding, doubles the existing locker space and gives the ECAC Football Classic champion Great Danes a state-of-the-art home when they return to defend their Northeast Football Conference championship next fall.

For more than 30 years, UAlbany football players crowded into a 1,700-square foot room at the base of the Physical Education building. There was only enough space for the upperclassmen to dress, and the old metal lockers provided little elbow room, especially for the larger linemen. Now, more than 80 pro-style lockers will give every player a classy home-away-from-home. Each seven-foot tall wooden locker includes a huge equipment storage box, large enough for a player to sit on while he changes clothes, along with a small combination lock safe for valuables.

“This is a wonderful thing. It definitely helps recruiting,” said head football coach Bob Ford. “Now, we can bring recruits down there, and they will be impressed with their lockers. It will help serve as an occasional meeting room, and there is enough space for everybody.”

“It needed to be a first-class project,” said Director of Athletic Development Don Ostrom, who said that $100,000 of the project’s funding was raised privately. “When a student is an athlete, he calls his athletic home the locker room.”

More such projects are in the works, but more money must be raised to help the University’s athletic programs compete in a more challenging Division I environment. “What we’re trying to do, as our Division I teams grow, is to grow and improve our infrastructure,” said Ostrom. “We need an artificial field for our men’s and women’s lacrosse teams and our field hockey team. Eventually, we need a new football stadium. But everything we need takes money. State funds are no longer available like they used to be. We need support from our alumni.”

Ostrom helps raise funds through various means. The Great Dane Club, the University’s athletic booster club, is one way. Everyone who donates at least $100 to the athletic program is a club member.

“We are getting the word out to our alumni, especially our athletic alumni,” Ostrom explained. “We want to make sure that they understand that we’re now in Division I, and that we have conference partners. I try to compare apples to apples. For example, I compare our program to colleges like Stony Brook or Binghamton, which both have built or are working on new athletic complexes. We don’t want to have a Taj Mahal, but we do have to elevate our facilities.”

Ostrom pointed out that Binghamton’s new complex, which will house that school’s basketball and track teams, will cost $32 million. Stony Brook’s football complex, completed in the last year, cost $22 million. “We’re not going to raise that kind of money, but we have to keep in mind what our goals are for the future,” he said.

Athletic Director Lee McElroy believes the locker room renovation demonstrates UAlbany’s ability to complete quality projects with private funding “It says to the recruits and to our former athletes that we have a commitment to a championship Division I program. We can’t remain static,” he said. “We have an overall master plan to improve our facilities. It will instill pride in our current players, but also in our former players, too.”

McElroy, who has extensive experience helping programs like UAlbany’s make the transition to Division I, said the Great Danes are on the right path. “All across the country, there are huge improvements being done with private funding. Notre Dame recently added 25,000 seats to their stadium, all with private funding. Everyone is looking to improve facilities. But state money is declining. We need our alumni and our community support.”

Bob Weiner, B.A.’82, is a sports reporter with The Daily Gazette in Schenectady, N.Y.

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