Hornet facilities: Back to square one

By Gabrielle Stevenson
State Hornet
Published May 5, 1999

Facilities in the Big Sky Conference
	On campus arena	Baseball stadium	Football stadium	Basketball courts for students	Seperate softball stadium
Portland State	W-Yes M-No	No	No	Yes	No
E. Washington	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sacramento State	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Cal State Northridge	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Idaho State	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Montana State	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Weber State	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Northern Arizona	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No

Debby Colberg can sell the weather. She can sell the academics. She can even sell the city itself.

But what she can’t sell to recruits is facilities, and to make matters worse, now she can’t even sell blueprints for upcoming projects.

During the April 20-21 Sac State elections, students voted down a referendum that would have increased student fees to pay for a recreational and fitness center. University president Donald Gerth said the project would have included an 8,000-seat arena as well.

“I think it is important to emphasize that it’s a single building with a range of purposes,” Gerth said before the elections. “It’s consistent with what is happening across other campuses.”

The referendum, sponsored by the Associated Students Inc., failed with a 57.3 percent no-vote (1289 votes) to 960 yes-votes. The fees would have put into motion plans for both facilities, as well as attracting corporate sponsors and additional university fund-raising for the arena portion of the project.

While Colberg believes the university needs better recreational facilities overall, she also admits athletics will need to improve its facilities to stay competitive in the various conferences.

“Improved facilities are essential to moving us forward as a strong Division I program,” Colberg said. “I hope it can be a reality one day. If we can learn from this initial go at the facility, we can come back together and establish another plan. It’s not impossible. I would like to see us give it another try.”

Colberg said facilities needs to be an issue now, so they can start preparing for the future.

“I would say that this program can move forward for maybe three more years,” she said. “After that, it’s going to be stymied without some facilities. Internally, as a department, we can continue to improve, but one of the bigger challenges I see will be the lack of facilities for the program. Facilities make a huge difference, particularly with recruiting.”

The first failed facilities proposal of the 1998-99 school year dealt with building a baseball and softball stadium. In October, a financial backer and developer pulled out of the multi-million dollar project less than a week before groundbreaking.

At the time, Judith Davidson was the athletic director but Colberg, appointed to the position in February, now has to worry about the consequences of two failed project proposals.

“We have to stay optimistic,” Colberg said. “I really don’t know the specifics of why the deal did not go through. Now we have nothing on the horizon, but the baseball, softball and soccer field projects are more do-able for us in terms of money compared to an arena. But I would still like for us to address the issue of building an on-campus arena.”

As far as the baseball/softball/soccer field projects, there is nothing in the works just yet.

“There is nothing at this time,” associate athletic director/head baseball coach John Smith said. “It’s a dead issue. We’re back at ground zero again. It’s very unfortunate that this had to happen, but you’ve got to go on and that’s what we’re trying to do. As much as we are disappointed in the outcome, we can’t quit.”

Being positive seems to be a department requirement.

“We are trying to make it the best we can,” Smith said of the 600-seat capacity Hornet Field. “The school has come out and done a little painting and helped fix the infield. It is not like they have abandoned us, but we can’t give up on a future project.”

ASI has not given up hope for the rec center, which leaves the prospect for a future arena project a possibility.

“We need to collaborate with students, the university, alumni, community members and the athletic department,” ASI president-elect Geoff Sakala said. “There was a lack of involvement by the university in the beginning, which put us behind from the start of the project. We need to solidify the business plan and need to sell it again. The referendum didn’t fail by very much.”

Colberg said she would like to help the referendum pass the second time.

“I would love to be involved,” she said. “Athletics can bring a lot to the table in terms of idea and the base of people that can help raise funds. This would be a really good project for a lot of people. Many of these proposals don’t pass the first time.”

Chairman of the Recreation Center Task Force, Jason Bryant, said the athletic department would be a welcome addition to the project.

“We would like for athletics to be more involved in this project because it would benefit them as well as the student body,” Bryant said. “We welcome Debby Colberg and hope she will be more involved.”