My annual 'Any news on track complex?' post
- Thread starter TIGER-PAUL
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They'll be coming out with a facilities master plan...I believe by this summer. That will include athletics. If there is anything planned, we'll know then. I'm not holding my breath since they replaced the plans for an indoor track with the intramural bubble.
I hope they don't skimp on this. There isn't another facility in the area,...WVU and Spire are the closest...Slippery Rock has something bare bones I think.... so if they do it right, they could actually make money hosting invites.
And then there is the outdoor track issue.
Believe me none of this stuff is bare bones. Of course, it’s just the planning stages and who’s the AD if and when any of this stuff is built is anyone’s guess
Thanks. Good to hear. There's a lot of money that needs to be raised, I'm sure, and it will take some time.
YSU has a pretty nice newer indoor track. I know they just hosted a pretty decent sized indoor HS meet with a good amount of wpial schools attending. Also have hosted Horizon League meet.
http://www.ysusports.com/information/facilities/watts
http://www.ysusports.com/information/facilities/watts
I say this everytime this gets talked about. We should drop track and field and get men's and women's lacrosse teams. Lacrosse is a tv sport and there would be many Pitt games on the ACCN. Also, it could serve a niche in this area.
I'm going to give you the reasons why it doesn't make any sense at all. They are numerous and not necessarily listed in order. Pitt is absolutely not going to drop T&F to make room for any sport, so the topic can be put to rest permanently.
Dropping T&F would effectively result in eliminating 6 ACC varsity sports which require a combined total of only 12.6 men's scholarships and 18 women's scholarships and replacing them with 2 ACC sports that need 12.6 for men and 12 scholarships for women. That's a big net Title IX negative for a department already on the edge of compliance. And if you drop only a couple of those 6 sports, men or women, you effectively destroy the entire remaining programs and still have the same scholarship limit to fill. Good luck getting any coach willing to work with those conditions which are already pretty bad at Pitt.
Every ACC school sponsors men's and women's XC, men's and women's indoor T&F, and men's and women's outdoor T&F. Pitt would also be the only ACC school without each of those sports. The net result of dropping T&F and adding lax would be that Pitt would sponsor the least number of conference sports of all 15 members, which would reduce its annual conference financial distributions. On the other hand, only 5 ACC schools sponsor men's lax and only 8 sponsor women's lax.
Perhaps more importantly, dropping T&F and adding lax would result in Pitt only sponsoring 15 NCAA varsity sports, which is below the threshold of 16 (and below the threshold of 8 women's sports) necessary to compete in NCAA D1 FBS.
It also replaces sports that enjoy limited travel budgets because of the weekly invite-only nature of XC & T&F competition with two sports which would require round robin play.
Neither does it solve any facility issues as there are no current lax-only facilities. Our soccer staffs, which have just received substantial financial and personnel investment from the university, are not going to pleased to share their field with two lax teams considering soccer also has a spring season. T&F can also generate revenue if they build a facility capable of hosting invites, and substantial revenue if the build them with that in mind.
Not to mention T&F is one of Pitt's longest-sponsored (going back over 125 years of continuous sponsorship) and most historically competitive and successful of Pitt's athletic programs with multiple NCAA and Olympic champions, multiple conference team championships, and and multiple national top 10 team finishes. It is also Pitt's longest desegregated sport going back about 110 years. Additionally, even with the severe handicap of not have any facilities, Pitt is still able score points at NCAAs and competes respectably in the ACC.
T&F is also the second in the most participated-in boys sport in high school and 1st most participated-in girls sport in high school. There are over 200 more Division 1 universities that sponsor a men's or women's T&F team compared to men's or women's lax. There is also a concern as to the political appropriateness of dropping the sport with T&F's demographics compared to lax.
T&F is also an international and Olympic sport; lax is not. Plus, there is a lot more money to be made in professional T&F. There are also more national broadcasts of the sport and its big events draw better at the gate, as anyone that has ever been to Penn Relays or similar big meets can attest.
There is also the happy coincidence that many football coaches want there to be a track & field program because of overlap in training and improving quickness and speed. And at many colleges, athletes participate in both.
It doesn't make historic, economic, conference, NCAA, or Title IX sense.
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We aren’t cutting T&F. It’s not nor has it ever been on the radar for a multitude of reasons. We will likely add a female sport in the near future and lax is one of the options.
I'm assuming tennis in not very costly? That's the other without a real facility.
Is that worth it here?
We aren't going to drop any ACC sports, especially women's sports. Seeing as we only sponsor 1 non-ACC sport, women's gymnastics which has been drawing fairly well, we aren't dropping that either.
BTW, Pitt tennis just beat PSU 5-2.
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You just spent way more time debunking on of SmF's hairbrain ideas than anyone in the history of Pantherlair. God bless you.
Btw...Edinboro hosts huge indoor track events in their bubble. They've had huge Events there over the last few weeks and have had just about every PIAA school represented.
I've been there, and I wouldn't consider their bubble to really be any sort of quality facility.
You want to see a fantastic indoor facility, see what Annapolis has. Mondo hydraulic banked track. They have this weird retractable turf for football too. Right on the water with big windows.
Pitt really needs a hydraulic banked track if it is going to do it right.
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I wouldn't either. And of course there is Spire. I'm not sure how that place stays afloat. But edinboro holds large events. Which seemed to be part of the subject matter in this thread.
Absolutely, there is a big time need for an quality indoor track facility in Pittsburgh.
Honestly tennis is the only thing I could see us dropping because of the cost to rent court space and cost of a new facility. The plans came back with a $15 million price tag & it only has about 8 women on the team. I could see those resources redirected into a new ACC sport with more female athletes.
Wesley Brown House at the Naval academy.....WOW...if PItt could develop something like that.....what a HUGE addition to the campus....but we're!!!
Nish not pleased.
I hear you on those numbers, but Pitt again would be the only ACC school without a women's tennis team. You just don't see power conference schools dropping sports these days, let alone women's sports, and almost never conference sponsored sports. It is always more expensive to start a program from scratch than keep an existing one afloat. But I'm sure tennis is last on the list of priorities.
They don't have land for it, but they need to develop an outdoor competition facility for both varsity and general student recreational use, but I presume they're only looking at an indoor facility. Regardless, the OC lot has to go, IMO. Giant wast of surface space. Frankly, it sucks to park there anyway with the ingress and egress problems.
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You got that right. Needs to go and then they could renovate the Cost Ctr and combine something w/ a new facility on the OC lot. Seems to me something like an indoor track is a multi-use facility which could be used for all kinds of student/staff/faculty recreation. But no... they went cheap and did the bubble.
Drop women's tennis and add women's lacrosse. With the ACCN, Pitt should have TV sports. Women's tennis is not a TV sport.
Weirdly, I had this conversion a couple of my old track buddies from CMU, one of him is friendly with this dude Gilman (himself a CMU alum) who is Peduto's Chief of Staff. Turns out there was an old Armory in Shadyside that was up for sale, and we were imagining a future where we could turn that Armory into something like NYC's Armory, which is an obviously world-class track facility, one that could be shared between Pitt, CMU, Chatham, Carlow and local high schools.
Otherwise, totally agree. Slippery Rock, Edinboro, and WVU's facilities are trash. Penn State's is world-class, as is Spire. If you're going to do it, has to be either 200m hydraulic Mondo (ala PSU, Armory, BU) or oversized Mondo, built around a 75% football field (Kent State, Akron, YSU, lots of others). 200m flat would absolutely not cut it for a competitive D1 program.
(FWIW, I'd estimate CMU's likelihood of completely renovating Skibo Gym and adding a 200m flat track in the next decade at 50/50.)
Man, all those days having to practice at the FFH, woof. Not sure how Lee McRae ever did it, much less the more recent guys like Spratling or Nkanata.
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At one time FFH was a decent facility for its day. It hosted a lot of colleges and high schools.
A lot of people have ideas for that Armory in Shadyside. Last I heard it was on track to be an ice rink. The problem with sharing anything like that, as a municipal project, is ensuring priority access for your varsity teams.
The bubble is perfect for general student recreation. They definitely needed that too. The Cost Center was way overcrowded.
Where does Pitt practice now? I assume Schenley Park (although back in the day, I used to see Chris Wray and a few other dudes at Gesling once or twice a week) for outdoor, but indoor? Field House?
I thought they went to CMU for outdoor track work. bwh05 will have to confirm that. Field House and Cost Center for indoor work.
Correct, but primarily the Field House and the Cost Center (they recently complete some T&F related renovations)
The old band-aid approach. Great idea.
I just wonder if anyone at Pitt has toured any MAC school - even those in driving distance... Akron, Kent, Toledo, Miami, OU - and looked (in shame) at their facilities (for students and olympic sports). The root cause for Pitt's woes... is clowns like Dean Billik treated Pitt athletes so bad that an entire generation was eliminated as a fund raising source. I don't know about the situation under Pederson/Long/Pederson but those athletes are now in the prime as a source which needs tapped - assuming they weren't also treated as second-class citizens.
The situation is so dire... Pitt probably has close to a billion dollars in facility needs (thanks to a generation of neglect). But it comes back to student-use and the "bubble"... that is NOT the answer.
Bottomline... they're screwed. Maybe the business school can do a case-study analysis of this abject failure for future generations.
The bubble isn’t for athletics so I’m not sure what you mean my “band-aid”. We have what I would guess about $300 million in Olympic sports facilities planned for the OC Lot space. One of them includes an indoor track. As for when it gets built, that’s gonna take some serious fund raising.
They have to replace with a garage. Right now it’s looking like the Pete lawn. Student rec facilities on the bottom and parking on the top levels sort of like a reverse of the Cost Center.
A parking garage on the Pete Lawn? I can't imagine that is going to turn out well from an actual student-use and campus continuity planning perspective. Pitt has never been good with long term planning of their campus. It's been a piecemeal hodgepodge with no continuity and no deference to prior design planning since the 1920s. Have to wait to see I guess.
The lawn doesn't get a whole lot of use to be honest. I think as long as the space is used for students it can be a good thing in the long run.
It should get tons of use. Pitt nor the Pitt Program Council are programing it appropriately. Could be put to use as an outdoor amphitheater too. Put up volleyball nets. I can't imagine removing limited green space on such an urban campus is a good idea. There's no other usable social or casual rec (e.g. frisbee tossing) lawn on the upper campus for students. It could be one of the nicer places on campus. I always thought they should construct a water feature on it...coming down one of the slopes.
A garage could go on the U lot. Putting one on the Pete lawn sounds like an horribly shortsighted decision to me. Hopefully, they're not planning to use all of it.
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I haven't paid really close attention to the plans tbh because we both know its a long way till a shovel goes into the ground. I will say again that the lawn doesn't get a whole lot of use for whatever reason. Sometimes there are people playing catch or laying out, but I don't notice a whole lot of Pitt programming events there.
Paco I always enjoy your posting on the past, present and the future of PITT'S progress. But this lawn next to the Pete is under utilized by students. They have the green space between Forbes and Fifth. They also within a 5 minute walk to Schenley Park where they can enjoy a great day in the park. Music venues are 10 minuetes away on North and South Sides. Free rides with the transit system. PITTas an academic school offers so much but they do need a vision to bring up to date the athletic side to make this university a name that everyone will academically and athletically in high regards!!
Keep on posting, my friend!!!!
I'm not debating that is underutilized. I'm saying it shouldn't be underutilized and I place part of that blame on the elements within the university responsible for programing events and opening it up better to foot traffic. It is the only usable flat greenspace on the upper campus and it is surrounded by student housing that is not within a five minute walk of Schenley. IMO, it is absolutely inane to put a parking garage on it instead of further developing it as the upper campus quad as it was originally intended to be.
No one denies that Pitt's athletic facilities are way behind. What people don't realize is how behind the rest of the campus is too. Lack of greenspace was one of the most cited problems for the campus in surveying current staff and students, along with lack of student meeting space and lack of academic space. Unfortunately, one thing Pitt doesn't lack is a lack of space.
But unless I'm missing something, IMO, a plan to build over the lawn is just another example of a lack of foresight and long-term development of the campus in the context of student life for a what would be quick fix to an obvious and real problem that no one is denying. There are other adjacent, completely unused areas to build on, they're just not level and more expensive to do so. Frankly, they should probably knock part of Trees Hall down and put a new rec center and garage on that plot. Trees Hall is terribly outdated, and a terrible design from the point of view of maximizing space. But IMO, the Pete and its lawn should be the heart of the upper campus with everything radiating out from there, just like the Cathedral Lawn should be the heart of the lower campus.
But we haven't seen the plans so maybe it is not as bad as it sounds on the surface.
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I think comparing Pitt to a MAC school (at least in terms of facilities) is apples to oranges, simply because Pitt doesn't have the same acreage to build upon. Here in NYC, Pitt looks a lot closer to NYU or Columbia than it does Kent State, which is why neither one of those schools have many on-campus facilities.
The only solution I can think of is if Pitt starts buying up South Oakland lot by lot, but that is unscalable as it gets and potentially even a non-starter for zoning reasons.
On the specific topic of track, my previous feelings that the train was headed in the right direction under Webb has pretty much evaporated. I have no idea if he's using (or is even allowed to use) the 12.6 scholarships, but it certainly doesn't look like it to me. WPA isn't exactly a hotbed for talent - Jordan Geist aside, who was never going to Pitt in a million, billion, trillion years - but I have to think he could be doing better than 14th at conference.
The only solution I can think of is if Pitt starts buying up South Oakland lot by lot, but that is unscalable as it gets and potentially even a non-starter for zoning reasons.
On the specific topic of track, my previous feelings that the train was headed in the right direction under Webb has pretty much evaporated. I have no idea if he's using (or is even allowed to use) the 12.6 scholarships, but it certainly doesn't look like it to me. WPA isn't exactly a hotbed for talent - Jordan Geist aside, who was never going to Pitt in a million, billion, trillion years - but I have to think he could be doing better than 14th at conference.
