By Tommy Valentine, Staff Writer
Being the official education partner of the Buffalo Bills certainly has its perks, and St. Bonaventure athletic director Tim Kenney has taken full advantage of the recently formed partnership.
Sunday afternoon, the men’s lacrosse team will be opening the 2020 season with a game played inside the ADPRO Sports Training Center in Orchard Park, New York, a stone’s throw away from New Era Field, the building typically serves as the training center for the Buffalo Bills.
Sunday’s matchup with the Saint Joseph’s University Hawks will mark the first NCAA Division I athletic event to take place at the ADPRO.
According to Kenney, the idea for playing the game at the ADPRO came about when he and men’s lacrosse head coach Randy Mearns were brainstorming about a potential indoor location to play one of the team’s games this season.
In his final year as head coach of the Canisius College men’s lacrosse team, Mearns took his group to Pinnacle Athletic Campus in Victor, N.Y., where the Griffins hosted Dartmouth College. Kenney mentioned Mearns had the idea to bring the Bonnies to the same location this season.
But for the man partly responsible for scheduling the outdoor track team’s first-ever indoor meet two weeks ago, the Pinnacle Athletic Campus was just not going to cut it.
“I said [to Mearns], ‘Why don’t we ask to see if the Bills would be willing to do it?’” said Kenney. “It’s a brighter facility, it’s right in our backyard. Being that we want to have such a presence in the region, to bring the show on the road, and have a home environment that spreads the name of the university is huge.”
Kenney emphasized that the partnership the university now has with the Buffalo Bills laid the foundation to allow him to present Pegula Sports & Entertainment with the unique opportunity of playing Sunday’s lacrosse game in the ADPRO.
Pegula Sports & Entertainment did not accept an interview request from The Bona Venture. However, Kenney said that despite the uncharted territory for the company commonly known as PSE, they were more than willing to accommodate the two teams.
PSE is owned by Terrence Pegula and his wife, Kim Pegula. Under the umbrella of PSE are teams such as the Buffalo Bandits of the National Lacrosse League, the Buffalo Sabres, and most notably, the Buffalo Bills.
Kenney said the current partnership between the Buffalo Bills’ side of PSE and St. Bonaventure University began to formulate over the summer when the two sides met prior to the start of the semester, first at St. Bonaventure, and then again in Buffalo. It was announced on Dec. 9 that St. Bonaventure would become the official education partner of the Buffalo Bills; the same day the Bills hosted Bona’s 1970 men’s basketball Final Four team.
The partnership, not even three months old, has proven to be nothing but beneficial for the university up to this point.
“They’ve been phenomenal partners right off the bat,” said Kenney. “When you say the word ‘partnership’, you know, it’s both sides working together, and I couldn’t be more happy working with them.”
The task now is preparing the ADPRO to host a lacrosse game. A task, easier said than done, considering the facility is designed primarily for football use.
According to Kenney, Daktronics, the company known primarily for scoreboards and electronic LED displays, will be responsible for supplying the 80-second shot clock and timing system. All the necessary lines will be painted in with removable paint, but no mention was made of where the lacrosse goals will be acquired from. As far as seating, gobonnies.com reported a space approximation of 500 fans inside the facility with no permanent seating, however fans may bring lawn chairs.
Sunday’s home opener will come nearly five weeks before the men’s lacrosse team played their first game in the Marra Athletic Complex last year. Even then the high was only 41 degrees. On Feb. 9, who knows what the weather will look like in western New York. But that’s one aspect of the game Coach Mearns doesn’t have to worry about.
“I’m just excited that, you know, we’re not going to be playing in 25-degree weather,” joked Mearns. “It’s always kind of fun to be the first to do something, and in the first official NCAA game that ever counted [inside the ADPRO], it’s going to be St. Bonaventure versus St. Joe’s…it’s going to be exciting.”
What kind of opportunities Sunday’s game presents for other athletic teams at St. Bonaventure moving forward, remains to be seen.
“We want to see how this one goes first,” said Kenney. “We’ll evaluate afterwards…if it does work, we’d love to be able to do another game there in the future…we can possibly sit down and have some more conversations, whether soccer can play up in there…we’re going to see how it goes.”
Opening face-off inside the Buffalo Bills ADPRO Sports Training Center against the Saint Joseph’s University Hawks is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday.
valenttr19@bonaventure.edu
