By Mikael DeSanto
Sports Assignment Editor
The St. Bonaventure University Department of Athletics announced Thursday that this seasons Select-Your-Seat event, set for Sunday, would be cancelled due to the on-going repairs to the ceiling of the Reilly Center.
“They have been working on maintenance and upgrades to the support beams that hold up the roof of the Reilly Center,” Steve Mest, the university’s associate athletics director for external relations, said. “They are doing welding work, re-enforcing the roof, and that work was supposed to be done by Friday of this week, and now they have encountered some delays and they are not going to be done until sometime next Monday.”
Mest said the department knew about the delay’s going into the day, but had made attempts to find other ways to have the event before making a final decision.
“We found out yesterday morning that they were not going to hit the Friday deadline. We knew this was a possibility and we had talked about what we were going to have to do if they couldn’t turn the building back over to us by Friday,” Mest said. “We looked for some alternatives to the Select-Your-Seat day, [but] nothings really going to work out for one reason or another, so we decided that if we got this word, we were going to have to cancel Select-Your-Seat day.”
The alternatives were other weekend dates that the event could be scheduled for, but Mest found that there were roadblocks to all of them.
“The problem is we have Columbus Day weekend coming up and that’s break, including a break for the basketball team,” Mest said. “Then we looked at the weekend of the 15-16, which wasn’t going to work, plus it’s a week before Fan Jam, which is scheduled for the 22nd, so it probably doesn’t make sense to hold those events back-to-back weeks.”
However, Mest said that the Select-Your-Seat event is not the event he feels needs to happen.
“For us having to cancel this event is certainly not a big deal, and we’re not going to lose any sleep over it, it would have been nice to have it, it certainly helps us in terms of getting some publicity, some excitement going for basketball season,” Mest said. “It’s certainly not as big of a deal as the Fan Jam event, it this was the Fan Jam we were talking about that would cause a lot more concern for all of us in athletics. Fan Jam is the big kickoff for the basketball season, so if you told me we had to cancel one of the two, this (Select-Your-Seat) would be the one I certainly would have picked.”
While the work on the arena continues, the basketball teams must continue to practice in the Richter Center, but Mest said that should not be a problem for them.
“They’ve had to deal with working out in the Richter Center since the semester started and so it really, probably not that big of a deal to be over there another couple of days,” Mest said. “They’re used to it by this point, I’m sure the players and coaches would love to be back in the Reilly Center, but a couple more days impact them too much, I really don’t think.”
The Reilly Center is set to re-open to both basketball teams on Oct. 4, according to the athletics department’s announcement.
