AD Blog - August 17, 2009

It took an eight-hour trip, but I think I have a better understanding of the feelings that the Towson alumni may have when they return to one of our football games.

A few weeks ago, my youngest son, Andrew, and I made our annual pilgrimage to a major league city to enjoy a baseball game and take in the sights. We learned that the Great American Ball Park was named for the Great American Insurance Group, but was also a description of the stadium, which opened in 2003. Located on the Ohio River, the stadium shares the riverfront with Paul Brown Stadium and is accessible by foot from much of downtown. While Camden Yards remains one of our favorite stadiums, the Cincinnati park really captured the community and its riverboat heritage. The game was sold out and even a long rain delay after the seventh inning did not dampen the enjoyment. It's a worthwhile and enjoyable stadium experience.

As we headed out of town Sunday, we stopped by our old parish, St. Susanna in Mason, Ohio for the 9 a.m. service. But when I pulled into the familiar church lot a few minutes before nine, there were no other cars in the lot. Very confusing. We located a small sign that said that the church had relocated two blocks south!

We hurried to the new location, not far from the original, and walked into a beautiful, large church in the round. Within the breath-taking church were lots of families with children of all ages. While the church had all the signs of a success, serving a much larger community than the one that that existed 12 years ago, it was not familiar. It was not the cozy church that I remembered and where Paula and I had developed strong friendships. Were those friendships and feelings still possible in this new, larger church with all its bells and whistles? Probably. It was a more appropriate and better church for the community, but it was not what I expected. It caught me off guard.

As Andrew and I began the eight-hour drive home, I began to relate the situation to Towson. I sometimes see a similar look on the faces of alumni who come back to Minnegan Field at Johnny UnitasÒ Stadium. When they walk into our 11,198-seat venue, see the bright colors of the FieldTurf surface, stand in the shadow of the four-story press box and gasp at the replays on the 37-foot wide High Definition video board, it may not look familiar.

Unitas Stadium is certainly a much different venue than Burdick Field, the original home of the program from 1968-78 where bleacher seating surrounded the field in the center of campus. And even when the program moved to its present location, Minnegan Field had only one side of seating until the renovated stadium was dedicated in the fall of 2002.  It is a beautiful venue, providing much more to our student-athletes, coaches and fans than ever before at Towson. I truly believe it's the best gameday stadium in our league, and it's a venue in which we take great pride.

But, after that experience in Cincinnati, I know that I will take extra caution to welcome our guests in a familiar tone. And, I will encourage our staff and our front-line gameday hosts to do the same. Hopefully, it will be our friendliness that enables them to feel at home.

One of the trademarks of Towson University has been that even with the university's growth to more than 20,000 students, the small classes and direct participation of the professors in the teaching process has enabled the university has maintained its intimate, small campus feel. It's truly the best of both worlds. The University is accomplishing great things, but people feel at home.

It's critical for our athletics program to give off that same aura, welcoming our guests to Towson's campus so that they really can enjoy Minnegan Field at Johnny UnitasÒ Stadium, one of our campus's true treasures. I can't wait until our home opener on Saturday, September 19 when I can put this new understanding to work! See you then!