Dr. Daryl Gross, Athletics Director, Remarks on FieldTurf
Opening Statement:
“We would like to welcome everybody here today to, what I call one of the seven wonders of the NCAA – the Carrier Dome. This is another great day for us, this is our second announcement regarding our “SU Athletics Tomorrow” plan. Obviously, last week we had the weight room groundbreaking and that project is already underway. Now we have the announcement of FieldTurf for the Dome and our practice fields. In addition, our field hockey field at Coyne will have a new AstroTurf field with all the amenities that go along with that.
“We want to start out by thanking the University leadership for their support. We want to thank our new partners at FieldTurf, as well, for giving us a presentation that couldn’t be beat and a presentation that we knew we had to have. We want to thank all those people, especially people like the Chancellor, the Board of Trustees, Lou Marcoccia, Rob Edson and Mark Jackson, who have been very instrumental with Pat Campbell, who is here, and Pete Sala and his staff. There is a group of people who have just been wonderful as we continue to fundraise for this through our Orange Pack.
“This is going to be one of the things we need to really get going with Syracuse athletics. This facility addition is really important for us if we are going to be competitive on a national level. Our student-athletes are going to be able to enjoy these fields right away, because we plan on having all these fields done by this Fall. This will be great for our football team, because they will benefit in a competitive way, it will help us recruiting-wise and now we will not have a team leave here and say it is dangerous or whatever they say negative about us. This is a wonderful day, because the surface, as you guys will see, it is really safe. It is high-tech. It is cutting edge. Those are the things that we need to have here at the Dome.
“The Dome field was replaced, I believe, 12 years ago so it was about time for a replacement now. Instead of just replacing it, we went to something that will give us a really keen advantage in the world of not only football, but lacrosse as well. We will be turfing two football practice fields, a lacrosse field and AstroTurfing the field hockey field. We will have so many student-athletes that will benefit from this.
“In addition, it will help us with practice situations and make it easier for us to compete at the level that we want to compete at.
“The last thing I want to say is that it is really important for us to move this program in a direction that will make us one of the top national programs in the country. Syracuse deserves it and we believe that we should be there. We should be good in everything we do, not just in football, basketball or lacrosse, but every single sport we play. These are the things that we are doing right now in order to move toward that. So our coaches and our student-athletes have the right resources to compete at the highest level.
“We don’t apologize about the weather here. We don’t mind the snow, it snows at Michigan and at Notre Dame and there are other programs that do very well that have snow and cold. That is why we have this wonderful Dome and that is why we are getting these fields.
“So with that I will turn it over to our wonderful football coach, Greg Robinson.”
On the cost of the new surface:
“We don’t like to get into all those details. It is for you guys to enjoy and for us to figure it all out and we feel like we have a pretty good plan. We are continuing to fundraise for it, but we have been creative in how we can get moving with this project right away with some nice backing from people to be efficient in how we manage these two projects fiscally. We have been very, very aggressive with our fundraising and people are buying into the whole “SU Tomorrow” vision. We are really happy about that. We will continue to fundraise for these projects.”
On the response from everyone involved:
“I think they see that we mean action and where we want to take the program. We don’t want to get into a lot of talk, we want to do things. And this is doing something and the weight room is doing something, hiring Greg Robinson, having a great football coach here. That is going to do wonderful things. Making a commitment to Jim Boeheim is showing that we want to be stable in basketball. We know that lacrosse is going to continue to do those things well. This will give our other sports an opportunity to really excel and get in to the national hunt of things, as well. I think people are seeing the vision and giving us that support that we need if we are going to have that vision.”
On what he expects the community reaction to be to the new FieldTurf:
“I think they should be excited. Those of us who have been around FieldTurf and have been on it and had teams play on it – they will know right away that aesthetically it is going to look beautiful. Already when you have a turf field, things are pretty organized as far as your lines go. This is better than grass, to me. It is going to look nice and it is a nice presentation. We won’t hear the student-athletes talk about having burns and all those type of things that they had before. This is a plus and I think the reaction will be positive.”
On if the University participated in terms of paying for this:
“No, just in terms of their support and understanding that we have a vision and we want to be as well known as some of the schools here. Whether it is that we are good at Newhouse and we are good in athletics, it is just consistent. It is nice that there are people in the University that back that vision.”
