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Coach Roussell

He is bringing in better skilled players but not super athletes like UCONN. But still heads above Schafer’s
recruits as far as ability. The guard coming in from Highland Springs to go with Grace Townsend should give
Lady Spiders an extremely quick backcourt.
 
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I'm surprised we don't have a volleyball team. It's a very entertaining women's college sport and most D1 schools play it. I have no idea if it's even still there but if it is the Keller Hall gym could be remodeled into a killer facility.
 
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Wood Hall said:
I'm surprised we don't have a volleyball team. It's a very entertaining women's college sport and most D1 schools play it. I have no idea if it's even still there but if it is the Keller Hall gym could be remodeled into a killer facility.
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And it would help with Title 9 without costing a fortune.
But, would we have cover the floor in sand and provide two piece uniforms?
 
The Keller Hall gym and pool were removed 25 years ago when the arts center was built.
 
SFspidur said:
The Keller Hall gym and pool were removed 25 years ago when the arts center was built.
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Well I certainly did not know that. Thanks for the update.

I never had much use for that side of the lake anyways. And vice-versa, I'll freely admit. Except for one history class, a couple Hardyball games on the Keller Hall field and the Greek Theatre, the Westhampton side might as well have been Mars. Never went over there.

I do support women's basketball, however.
 
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Wood Hall said:
I'm surprised we don't have a volleyball team. It's a very entertaining women's college sport and most D1 schools play it. I have no idea if it's even still there but if it is the Keller Hall gym could be remodeled into a killer facility.
Click to expand...

This would of been the appropriate response when we added Men's Lacrosse rather than dropping 3 men's sports.
 
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Ferrum Spider said:
This would of been the appropriate response when we added Men's Lacrosse rather than dropping 3 men's sports.
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Yeah - but addition of women's volleyball would have watered down our student population. Cause we all know adding a roster of 20-25 student-athletes likely means all of them would have been just barely making it academically. And our ranking as a school overall would have nose dived in those every so important - Most Beautiful Campus, Best Value, Best Liberal Arts, etc rankings.
 
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SpiderTrap said:
Yeah - but addition of women's volleyball would have watered down our student population. Cause we all know adding a roster of 20-25 student-athletes likely means all of them would have been just barely making it academically. And our ranking as a school overall would have nose dived in those every so important - Most Beautiful Campus, Best Value, Best Liberal Arts, etc rankings.
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In the end I'm sure it was all worth it to the decision makers. We traded perhaps the most influential active donor whose now working with VCU to acquire every inch of available real estate near and around broad st building up facilities with ties to the community for some jerk Billionaire turning the school into his personal playground and could give two $h!ts about anything other than just putting his name on every new building on campus. All because we refused to add an extra sports team that had no chance to compromise the entire institution (Volleyball) . Once VCU builds that new athletics village it's game over for our non Olympic sports against them that we still regularly beat them in.
 
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Ferrum Spider said:
In the end I'm sure it was all worth it to the decision makers. We traded perhaps the most influential active donor whose now working with VCU to acquire every inch of available real estate near and around broad st building up facilities with ties to the community for some jerk Billionaire turning the school into his personal playground and could give two $h!ts about anything other than just putting his name on every new building on campus. All because we refused to add an extra sports team that has no chance to compromise the entire institution (Volleyball) . Once VCU builds that new athletics village is game over for our non Olympic sports against them that we still regularly beat them in.
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The Queally-Ukrops trade turned out pretty bad for us. The Ukrop family (while a tad pretentious at times) is extremely well respected and well connected in RVA. We went for the guy with the bigger wallet but failed to realize the guy with the slightly smaller wallet was connected to literally to every other big wallet/decision maker in the area. And now he is leveraging his influence for our rival, meanwhile our horse is in the news for all of the wrong reasons.

This decision and how it played out is right up there with the 10 year contract we gave Mooney as one of the all time bad decisions UR has made. I think losing the Ukrop's will probably have much bigger long term impacts for the University.

P.S. Bobby would have moved on from Mooney a long time ago too.
 
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spiderman said:
adding lax was a good decision. I can't speak to the rest.
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The rest has made it not worth it and I say this as a huge LAX fan and former player (Not Richmond obviously). Several former posters on this board were Soccer/TF/CC athletes and were understandably pissed. Honestly I don't know how they still support the athletic program.

If we are going to have mega donors calling the shots, I would of preferred we stayed with satisfying the local benefactor with ties to the community who appeared to do everything in his power to mediate the situation over this guy who cant even properly respond to PR crisis management appropriately. (What an idiot)

If PQ was head of the board at the time I have no doubt we would of dropped to the patriot league in 2005. Should just get it over with and rename the city of Richmond VCU and U of R should be renamed to U of Q. This school has made some poor decisions over the past decade both athletically and administratively and its now finally coming to roost.

Id probably be a lot less bitchy about it if we weren't so irrelevant in other athletic programs. This was promised to be our flagship non revenue sport program and our football program has as many NCAA tournament appearances (And more wins) since its inception. If we were in the CAA 3 NCAA tournament appearances would be acceptable, not the SOCON and not for what we gave up to get it.

In an ideal world they would of just added another sport but its UofR and we cant have all these dumb athletes with their higher graduation rates than the actual student body coming to the school and perhaps even taking pride in going there ruining the demographics of the school.

Im a pretty patient fan. Hell I dont even hold a degree from this school I am a unicorn fan for this athletic department. I still buy season tix to both programs and go to a ton of other non revenue sports and my apathy is through the roof with our athletic department and it pains me to say it. We dont fully fund most of our sports in terms of scholarships even with our endowment and we cant even have a properly functioning PR department with up to date information. Go back and look at my post history and I am far from a doom and gloom poster. Many on here would probably accuse me of defending the status quo but I am far past wanting to see change at the top of this school. This stuff all goes in cycles but it seems like this one will never end and no one manning this ship of fools with the ability to change anything seem to care while they just collect paychecks and ask for donations.
 
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I think someone has really lost their minds if they think this only happens at a small private
university. There are so many true stories of wealthy oil men supporting their school of choice
in Texas it reads like a good script for a movie.
Wealth comes from a drive, that makes that person (men or women) always want to be the winner.
If Bobby Ukrop got his nose out of joint because of us doing away with soccer, ask him to show you
the practice facility he built.
 
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Men's lax is the perfect sport for UR. The demographics of lacrosse players (generally wealthy and private school kids from the Northeast) fits perfectly into the UR profile. Add in the fact that lacrosse players in general usually become good donors as well. The mistake was cutting other sports. We could have had both Quealy and Ukrop and maybe the two could have balanced each other out.
But that decision - along with others, has shown that UR is not "all in" with athletics. We still want to be known as an academic institution first and athletics is second. Other schools similar to ours have, with strong academic profiles, have figured out you can be both. UR has simply chosen not to be.
 
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Almost lost in this thread…but think one could argue that having added a volleyball team would have enhanced our “most beautiful campus” odds. Just saying.

as for Queally vs Ukrops. Reality is that it’s Queally vs Ukrops & Robins. I think we came out on the wrong side of it. Chased the quick money.
 
DTSpider said:
Almost lost in this thread…but think one could argue that having added a volleyball team would have enhanced our “most beautiful campus” odds. Just saying.

as for Queally vs Ukrops. Reality is that it’s Queally vs Ukrops & Robins. I think we came out on the wrong side of it. Chased the quick money.
Click to expand...
While we all love to pat ourselves o the back and say we went to a great university (and we did), we are still a small university that has limited number of Robins, Ukrops and Queally’s. [I know I am leaving out some other great donors
to the school] With structures named after donors like Robins, and Queally, how can we say we came out on the wrong
side of it?
You may have a different perspective if you had, had to live in the barracks your freshman year. LOL
 
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DTSpider said:
Almost lost in this thread…but think one could argue that having added a volleyball team would have enhanced our “most beautiful campus” odds. Just saying.

as for Queally vs Ukrops. Reality is that it’s Queally vs Ukrops & Robins. I think we came out on the wrong side of it. Chased the quick money.
Click to expand...
True. Add women's volleyball then maybe add some sand volleyball courts and the Spring and Summer at UR gets a lot more interesting.

Not sure why it had to be one or the other? Queally wanted Lax - so you add Lax. Ukrops wanted to keep soccer, so you keep soccer. Add Women's volleyball for Title IX. And isn't all the money happy?
 
I am told the deal was in place add women's rowing (already had the facility and a pretty stout club team, easy step up). Then a couple of key faculty leaned hard on Ayres and he folded like a cheap suit. Once he took the position he circled the wagons to survive the firing squad. I had a small hope once he left that the new administration would make things right, but instead it appears to me that Crutcher doubled down. I believe had he taken the opposite path we could have brought the Ukrops and Robins back in the fold and kept Q.
 
that makes more sense. Q added lax. and a heck of a practice facility. I don't think he had any part in cutting any sports. that decision lies at other's feet.
 
SFspidur said:
But then you violate the magic ceiling of 13% of the student body being athletes, above which we suddenly fall to the 135th spot in the regional southern university rankings according to U.S. News & World Report.
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And of course we all know that athletes are lazy and irresponsible and cannot make the grade in the classroom. And none show loyalty or make donations to the school once they graduate. He said sarcastically!
 
urfan1 said:
And of course we all know that athletes are lazy and irresponsible and cannot make the grade in the classroom. And none show loyalty or make donations to the school once they graduate. He said sarcastically!
Click to expand...
Right - and remember, the sports they cut - I believe it was Men's soccer had a higher team GPA than the overall average GPA of the general student body.
 
SpiderTrap said:
Right - and remember, the sports they cut - I believe it was Men's soccer had a higher team GPA than the overall average GPA of the general student body.
Click to expand...

this is not true, at least according to Ayers. At a city alum meeting I heard him personally say the exact opposite. This was right around time of cuts & there were a couple soccer supporters at meeting who raised their high gpa & Ayers cut in to say “but it’s still below that of the general student body”. I’m paraphrasing but that’s essentially direct quote i remember it clearly. I expect Ayers was correct but he went out of his way to make that point.

Overall Ayers was flustered. The soccer guys were respectful but quite direct. At one point he said something like don’t ask me about the cuts I don’t want to talk about this subject any longer. He came across as a petulant child bc he was taking a little heat.

later at end of meeting I introduced myself privately & brought up some business my company recently did w U of R. He knew about it & then took personal credit for it. It was so weird to me. He really had nothing to do w it unless u can take credit for any $ spent on anything bc he’s the Pres.

prior to that I actually had a solid impression of him. But those 2 things soured me it was eye opening. So if anyone says Ayers f’d up those cuts I’d believe it.

Hearing Cooper & Ayers publicly speak u wonder how they could be hired. We need Pres. who can run a room large or small. Heilman & Morrill I think could do it. But we’ve gotten away from that. Cooper & Ayers embarrassingly bad unless it was a history topic for Ayers. Crutcher idk enough to judge he seems inherently nice maybe overkill on the cello, but he’s also leaving w a PR disaster on his watch. The new guy we’ll see but he seems to follow the UR trend of the nerdy academic with little to no intuition.
 
I think we can put this cutting sports thread to bed. The fact of the matter is UR decided to cut sports in order to add Men's Lacrosse. I don't think anyone disagrees with the addition of Men's Lacrosse, where the disagreement lies in the cutting of 2 sports (men's soccer and track) to supposedly make room. It doesn't matter the reasons given (money, watered down student population, title IX) - all that matters in my opinion is that this decision, along with many others along the way (revolving door of AD's, letting Rocco leave, delay in on campus football stadium and basketball practice facility, etc) shows that athletics is not the priority at UR. Something we as fans need to either just accept at some point or support another school that does just that. UR is fine with investing just enough to be competitive, but does not want to go any further than that. The result will be we will have a respectable athletic program and our football and basketball teams will have winning records - but post-season success, where you get your real exposure and return on investment - will never be significant.
 
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