The men’s lacrosse team, which is set to begin its inaugural season this spring, will be the biggest team on campus, according to St. Bonaventure University’s Athletic Director Tim Kenney. And with a team of 35 to 40 players expected this season, a new locker room is being built just for them in the Reilly Center.
Discussions about the new locker room began over a year ago when the university announced that it will be adding a men’s lacrosse team. The locker room is taking place of what was formerly known as the fast break room that was used primarily during home basketball games.
“Discussions began well past last year,” Kenney said. “We knew that this was going to be the largest team that we were going to have here. Any of the original spaces that we had weren’t good enough to hold the number of kids that we are going to have in the program. We had to find a space that was big enough. The team has thirty-five guys right now, and that number will be up to forty-five, maybe even fifty in a couple of years.”
According to the athletic department’s press release about the new locker room, the project is worth about $175,000, and the funds were raised through private donations.
“We’ve already brought in about half of what we need,” said Kenney, “And we anticipate that it should be fully done cashwise by the spring. It will all be covered by donors.”
Kenney added that the locker room will have unique features that will be used to accommodate the simple needs of the team.
“There will be oak wood lockers and each locker will include power and USB ports within them,” said Kenney. “There will also be slots for sticks in each locker, which is a unique feature because of the sport. The lacrosse sticks will be able to fit into these holes so they aren’t hanging around all over the place. There will also be a full bathroom with showers.”
And while Kenney admits that there won’t be a whole lot of shiny, extra features in the locker rooms, the university and the athletic department will look to improve the locker room in the future.
“As in bells and whistles, [there’s] nothing great,” said Kenney. “It is going to be a good solid locker room. Once we get the costs covered for the actual construction part of it, then we will look into image treatment and making it look a lot nicer.”
While Kenney understands other teams and clubs may have some hard feelings about the newest team on campus getting a new locker room right away, he explained the decision making process.
“I don’t think there are a ton of hard feelings, and if there was I think it would be a lack of understanding of how we have to go through the process to allocate the space. Some things will have to move out of the RC like ROTC did to free up space. It’s a process,” Kenney said. “There is patience involved, and student-athletes aren’t involved in a higher end discussion like this, so when they see another team getting something like this and then they think ‘why aren’t we getting something?’ We’re going to take care of everybody.”
As for the lacrosse team, Kenney thinks that this brand new, shiny locker room is something that could potentially attract more recruits to play here.
“Once we get it done completely the right way with image treatment, it will look more like our men’s basketball locker room and that is our most advanced locker room,” said Kenney. “When a recruit walks in and sees that this locker room will be his second home on campus, it’s going to help. Because there are other programs that might not have that right now.
Kenney expressed the importance to get this project done right, so each player now and in the future can use the locker room to fulfil their needs.
“We wanted to make sure that we got this right the first time,” said Kenney. “We can always upgrade the images and other things to make it look nicer, but to be able to accommodate for a team of 45 to 50 players was our main concern.”
The project is still under construction, but it is expected to be completed by the start of the 2019 season.
By Staff Write Mike Hogan
hoganm17@bonaventure.edu
