AIDAN POLLARD
Sports Editor
Maybe. But it would take a lot.
Fredonia isn’t a Division I school, so we’re not really in the running to be the next Syracuse, or even compete with UB for that matter. But a better question to ask would be what will it take for Fredonia’s athletics to compete with some of the other SUNY and Division III schools?
Right now, Fredonia’s sports are attended mostly by families of athletes and other Fredonia athletes, but how do we get showings like when we hosted lacrosse nationals a few years ago? Or the SUNYAC Championship hockey game hosted by Geneseo last season?
The first things that would need to happen are getting more competitive and getting much better facilities.
Since Fredonia’s new athletic director Jerry Fisk started last year, new and better facilities are certainly at the forefront, but much bigger renovations are going to be needed to see any significant change any time soon.
Fredonia got a new performance center this year, where Fredonia athletes can all go to get strength and conditioning training from Jon-Ryan Maloney, Fredonia’s strength and conditioning coach.
The performance center was a really strong and clever place to start renovating Fredonia athletics because the center is open to all of the Fredonia teams, so everybody sees the benefit.
Plus, two of the biggest selling factors that can get a recruit to come to a school are the competitiveness of the school’s programs and the quality of the athletics facilities. Starting with the performance center gives Fredonia the ability to give every single program a new facility to show off to recruits while they’re visiting the campus.
The performance center is a great start, but it also can’t be where the department stops.
Granted, Fredonia has also installed a new windscreen for the tennis courts as well as new bleachers in Dods gym so the basketball teams can play up in the gym instead of the fieldhouse.
But this job won’t be complete until there is at least a new hockey arena. And a new indoor and outdoor track wouldn’t hurt, either.
The problem with the Steele Hall Arena starts with the fact that there’s only seating on one side of the arena, and it doesn’t have that large of a capacity.
A new arena would both allow more spectators to come watch games as well as entice new and better recruits coming in to pick Fredonia over other schools with lesser rinks.
If a school can get better facilities, then the recruits it can bring in will be better, and the school will become more competitive.
Obviously, facilities aren’t the only thing that can fix athletic departments, culture plays a part as well.
But culture can come from better facilities.
If a team has a better rink, track, court or field, they will probably be more proud of being an athlete at their school, jumpstarting a positive and competitive culture. And if a recruit sees that positivity, unity and competitiveness, they will be more likely to go to that school.
Getting more competitive as an athletics program has everything to do with being able to get more and more competitive recruits, and the highest-impact way to do that is will state-of-the-art facilities.
The other highest-impact way to make Fredonia into a sports school would be to introduce a football team.
But that comes with a ton of complications from where to put a stadium to Title IX restrictions.
So for now, to become more and more competitive we need to keep improving all of our facilities so that we can keep bringing in talented recruits that will help get this school onto the national stage in its sports.