Lacrosse
- Thread starter plcp
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If your in the ACC, should probably be thinking about making it a letter sport, both men and women’s
We need to focus on getting our existing sports up to code first.
Would you need to? Men’s and women’s soccer are both in the fall (with a short spring schedule), while lacrosse is in the spring. I think you could make it work with some lacrosse-specific improvements to Ambrose Urbanic Field, and then a combination of the sports dome and the Cost Center for practice space and the very early spring games that need to be moved indoors. You’d ideally like a second outdoor turf field for practice space if you’re going to add two more field sports, but I think you could make it work with the facilities right now.
Lax also has a fall season. All the teams are practicing or scrimmaging essentially year round. Pitt's already at a facility disadvantage. It's already bad enough there is only one soccer field. 1 combined practice and competition field for 3 or 4 teams? The Sports Dome is not for varsity athletics. They'd need at least one other outdoor field, IMO.
I don't see any reason to rush adding Lax except on the women's side for Title IX. There currently is a definitive overcrowding issue in athletic facilities on the upper campus, and although "Varsity Heights" will address that somewhat, they can't make new land. And women's-only or men's+women's lax additions would both bleed $ unless something changes dramatically in how conference or tv network revenue is distributed. The diminutive size of Pitt's relatively small athletic department is one of the only things offsetting the dismal cash generation of its revenue sports. It's got a long way to go before it catches up to peers on gate receipts, donations, and regional rights and sponsorship contracts. Yes, lax is a natural add being in the ACC, but right now neither lax nor any other sport makes any sense from a facilities and business perspective, at least from how I see it. That doesn't account for a Daddy Warbucks underwriting and/or endowing it.
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I hope that is temporary. Sounds like a bad idea to me, having seen other soccer and lax facilities at programs well below the ACC level.
But tennis doesn't impinge on other sports' access to practice/competition space. They don't need to re-line or reconfigure any other progam's venue for tennis. If they had adequate practice fields and it was more of just a competition venue, that is different story. I wonder what Vidovich and Waldrum think of this. Tennis needs to be fixed too.
I hope there is a overall athletic department strategy to adding lax this beyond just being a pet project, and I get that there absolutely could be, particularly being in the conference we are in. I also hope they are looking at some serious fundraising for this, because this network bump isn't going to improve Pitt's revenue position among the P5, which is near last among the schools it is actually competing against, so adding more mouths to feed feels risky to me. I know Lyke has a big vision, but I hope Lyke isn't a Yow. Some debt is ok, Maryland level debt is not.
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I agree with you that it would really be ideal to fit another outdoor turf field somewhere on or close to upper campus for practice purposes. But, that said, I really don’t see the issue with lacrosse and soccer sharing the same game facility - Virginia and Duke have the same facility for both lacrosse and soccer, and the same is true for a more urban campus like Northwestern. It doesn’t seem to hurt UVA or Duke’s lacrosse or soccer programs at all to share the same game facility. Hell, Syracuse lacrosse plays their home games at the Carrier Dome.
Both have nicer facilities than Ambrose Urbanic, to be sure, but I do believe there’s a decent amount of potential to improve Pitt’s facility both in terms of spectator space/amenities and facilities for the teams. The practice space would be the biggest issue by far, and might require flexibility on the university’s part in allowing varsity teams to schedule practices at the sports dome on top of the Cost Center and the outdoor field.
The biggest issue is practice space of which UVA and Duke have substantially more. Syracuse lax uses the Dome, Manley's indoor turf, Lampe (sod), and the new indoor football practice complex which is lined for lax too. It's not so much about sharing a stadium competition venue, its about having 5-6 teams in the PSC support facility as opposed to 4 and no real practice field field unless you are counting Cost.
For instance, apart from Koskinen Stadium where they play games, below are Duke's 3 practice fields (2 turf, 1 sod) for lax and soccer:
Also, I should say that I believe the most realistic scenario is Pitt adding just women's lax due to Title IX. Pitt definitely is skirting the edge of Title IX compliance as far as women's varsity sports offerings. If rowing (because it avoids further crowding on the hill) is cost prohibitive, and apparently it is, then lax absolutely makes the most sense being that we are in the ACC. And in that scenario where they are looking at just adding a women's sport for Title IX, and they've looked at the expenses of rowing and those don't make sense compared to lax, then yes, I'm 100% for adding women's lax as the next option. One advantage is that women's lax would have more broadcast potential on the ACCN than rowing, or probably even something like field hockey.
So the question is do they add men's lax now which would sort of defeat the purpose of Title IX balancing if that is actually the motivation for adding women's lax. I'd hope if they do go with just women's lax, they will add men's at some point (which may then mean also adding another women's sport). But 6 teams in the PSC, even with a 3rd floor expansion, and 4 of them using one field for competition and practice seems a bit much. But perhaps just adding women's is the half-way point during which they can try to figure out some facility issues before adding men's. I bet we are just adding women's lax but bwh05 would probably know for sure.
Bottom line is we need land very badly.
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i've said it for years: bulldoze PAA and alumni hall and put fields and facilities there. (reality is we should put a multi-use stadium there for football and other sports). buy out S&S and bulldoze that too. i don't give a #### about the historical garbage - get it out all out of there. we're the biggest employer in the city and need the space. use it for athletics. anything we need administrative can go vertical. athletic fields can't.
decades actually. walking by those 2 dopey buildings, which were never used in the 90's when i was there. pointless to have these large spaces unused in the heart of campus. i mean, if you MUST have buildings there, at least make them dorms.
And have you been back to campus since the 90s to see the former Masonic Temple or have followed any of the news about the PAA over the last year?
I hope your posts are extremely rich in satire.
I can tell you the absolutely stupidest thing that Pitt could do is replace those buildings...any buildings in the central campus including the much maligned brutalist ones...with fields.
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i remember when you didn't act like a total d!ck on these forums. you doing ok dude? honestly. i can't have a different opinion than you? you know everything these days, eh?
Lol. You've more than earned my ignore button! Don't worry, I won't be reading or responding to your opinions any further.
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i got the exclamation point and everything. for disagreeing. can't believe how this dude changed.
I’ve been trying to follow this thread, but I still have one question: Are they still club teams or is there now an official plan to make them a school-sanctioned sport?
I, too, hope that the Victory Heights project can address some of these problems. Just not sure where you put them. Has it been decided what the site of the current field house will he used for? Just parking? Could you install a mini practice field for Olympic sports around the new indoor track facility?
I, too, hope that the Victory Heights project can address some of these problems. Just not sure where you put them. Has it been decided what the site of the current field house will he used for? Just parking? Could you install a mini practice field for Olympic sports around the new indoor track facility?
Yes, there are still men's and women's club teams. The women's club team has been excellent, winning a Division 1 club national championship in 2014 and finishing as the national runner up in 2017.
There has been no official announcement as of yet about adding women's lax as a varsity sport.
My guess, and it is just a guess, is Pitt will be eyeing the strip of land currently below the PSC for new fields if it can ever acquire the remainder of the structures on that strip.
Awesome. Glad to see that, slowly, we’re beginning to have more success in Olympic sports, whether it’s club or varsity. I don’t follow too many teams except for when the ultimate team is in the playoffs. They’re fun to watch.
It would make sense. Looking at the county property records, it appears that Pitt has purchased most of the parcels between Brackenridge Street and the PSC - but a few of the remaining houses are still owned by outside parties. Pitt doesn’t appear to have acquired any new properties in that area since 2009 or 2010, while at least one of the remaining homes was sold (not to Pitt) in 2014.
Even still, there’s a question about whether you’d be able to fit a regulation-width soccer field between the PSC and Brackenridge even if Pitt owned all of the parcels. You might be able to do it as the area widens out a bit behind Cost Field (and Pitt does own all of those parcels), but it’d be a tight squeeze.
Well, indoor tracks are smaller than others, so could you install turf inside the track, albeit it might not be a full-length field or may cut in like Akron’s, or does T&F use that space for something?
To really do an indoor track right, most have the turns be hydraulically banked a few degrees. That makes it almost impossible to do proper sprints on the oval track, so a lot of the indoor tracks that I’ve seen have sprint lanes and the various jump and throw facilities in the infield - so the whole infield is the same type of rubberized track surface, not turf.
Now, building a proper indoor track connected to the Cost Center would probably allow them to rip out the indoor track that’s currently in the Cost Center and take turf all the way to the edges of that space, which might increase its utility. But if they’re gonna spend the money on an indoor track, it wouldn’t make sense to build it with a turf infield.
Okay, thanks for the clarification. Had an idea but wasn’t sure. Now do you know if the plan is for an indoor track or a “proper indoor track?”
That’s more than a few levels above my non-existent pay grade.
My hope and my broad impression of Lyke, though, is that she has no intentions of half-assing the whole Victory Heights vision. Whether the money comes through to do what she has in mind, IMO, would probably be the bigger question. There’s no doubt that the Pittsburgh metro area has an unfulfilled need for a full indoor track facility - I think the closest are either in Morgantown, Youngstown, or State College. There’s an opportunity for Pitt to take advantage.
Yup, that’s a good point. I wish they could do something at Schenley, too, but that may be pushing.
I agree that VH will be the real deal. I don’t know anyone connected to it, but my basis for that assumption is that if she was going to mail it in, this would’ve been released and announced a long time ago. The project was said to be 18 months long and we were close to that when she first got here. However, it seems that she scratched everything and started over so that she could give her input and put her mark on it. I think that explains the delay of releasing some sort of plan to this point. But again, that’s all an educated guess.
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