Alright guys, as promised, I interviewed associate AD Tom Gabbard, who's in charge of all the athletic facilities on campus and also has a hand in other projects as well. I got a full update on everything last spring but a lot has changed since then. Taking in some of your questions as well on everything, here is the latest going on with the Hokies. This is all word for word from Gabbard:
FOOTBALL, PRACTICE FACILITY
*The indoor practice facility is on time, on budget. They've been working seven days a week to make sure they can get out of the weather. It's been pretty smart planning and they've done a great job.
**The graphics package in there, that RP goes out this week. All the presentations are due in March. We hope to award the project the first week in April and have it done July 1, which is corresponding with the finished product. The sound and video is all set to video is set to go out. We know what we want, it's just getting it priced right. It's pre-wired, so it's just a matter of buying the equipment and hooking it up. It'll all go back to the studio, so it's set up nice. We're hoping to finish in July, so when pre-season starts, we've got it.
LANE STADIUM
*We're working on concession improvements. We wanna work hard on trying to fix up the east side, the lower east side. Some of that stuff is getting pretty old. We'll take our first run at it this year. I'm not sure if we'll get all of it done, but it'll be an improvement.
MERRYMAN CENTER
We're doing a study to spruce up the Merryman. I've showed it the Hokie Club, shown it to the Board of Directors, showed it to football. Canon Design, who did the Hahn Hurst graphics and designed the building and did the graphics for the football locker room, we retained them to take a fresh look. Their first run was nice, but it was pretty conservative. Kevin Jones has a degree in design engineering and he challenged them to get outside the box and come up with some pretty nice stuff. It's a money thing and timing thing, but our goal is to freshen up the whole look when you come into Merryman. I don't know when we'll get it done, but I know we wanna get it done as soon as we can. 1998 is dated. It's amazing how quick things get dated. It's all money. If we get enough of it, we'll spend it.
CASSELL COLISEUM
*The next step is an upgrade in the graphics package that will go in after the season. It's all set to go. We wanted to squeeze it in earlier, but you've gotta play basketball. It'll have a little more of Buzz and what he stands for, which is how we should do it. The hallway that goes to the locker room will be a lot nicer. The men's basketball side will have a lot of new stuff on the walls, some high-tech stuff. The women are getting involved on their side, too. Dennis Wolff has chipped in a little bit. It's one of those buildings that you wanna continue to keep it fresh if you can. Buzz is a breath of fresh air for sure.
**The company is doing a prototype color lead, that'll give us some more color. They're gonna give us four, one for each color of the catwalk. When we do introductions next year, we'll have it to enhance the intros even more. The camera guys love it.
***That west side, when you open doors on a cold day to let people in, you're freezing out the people in sections six and eight. My goal is ton create another entrance west of there, to kinda buffer them and then dress it up and make it look like something more than it is.
***We're redoing our video offices. We moved the studio down to our post-game press conference room in Cassell Coliseum. That's what the green wall is up there for. And we turned the old studio into more offices because they're getting bigger. The room will just double as a studio during the week, which is probably good because they have the sound boards up in there.
RECTOR FIELDHOUSE
*We finished the feasibility study on that. The goal is to renovate Rector Field House, to add a new softball hitting facility in the front of it, take the trailers off the the north end, which is used for halftime rooms for soccer and lacrosse and actually build more permanent halftime rooms. It'll double for ACC indoor championship press room and officials and food.
**The throws area in Rector is getting to where the athletes are throwing that weight so well that they one-hopped it into the garage door in the last meet and tore up the garage door. That's fine, I can fix the garage door, but in two or three years, if they hit that garage door, then you've got a world record throw and you can't count it. So we probably need to address that and that's part of the plan. We'll go to the board of visitors in March with the asking authorization to actually plan. That takes you to schematic design and deciding what you wanna do next.
460 FUTURE INTERCHANGE
*The runway to the airport will expand and the dairy barn will go away. They're gonna block off Southgate Drive, not now, but ultimately when they finish. The campus entrance will then move somewhere halfway between where Main Street comes across and where Southgate is. There will be a big interchange built there, directly into the corporate research park and directly into campus. That allows the runway to expand without any problems. The dairy barn will be moved in June, building a new one at Ketlin Farms. That's almost done, so it will move this summer.
As far as traffic,
**I wanna think they've got it figured out. They're crazy to make it too messy for football. And I think they've figured all that out. I think there will be a lot of work done, not touching 460 until they're ready to make the cut. There's been a lot of planning and the interchange will be beautiful. It's gonna have a real Tech look to it, which is interesting to be on a state road and have a Tech look to it, with Hokie Stone and arches and the whole bit. The last picture I saw was very attractive.
BASEBALL/TENNIS
We've got thoughts about expanding the baseball park, but nothing really in place yet. We just put in a new system, the first one in the country, that has all the indoor tennis courts that way, called Play Smart. It's six cameras on every court with a kiosk. You can train with it, turn the cameras on, see how much topspin is on your ball, how deep you hit it, cross court, serve speed, even draws the lines for you. We're the only school in the country that will have six courts equipped to do that. Princeton has one and California has a system. NC State is putting in a system like it, but our is a system that was designed by tennis players, for tennis players. I can't wait to get on it. You can say to the machine, 'I wanna hit cross-court forehands, but I want all of them within three feet of the baseline.' Electronically, it draws a square on the screen and if you hit it in there, it gives you a beep and keeps score for you. That's really good for our tennis program. Jim Thompson and Mary Ann have done a good job and it'll just help them recruit, plus help our guys get better.
And as always, what's posted here, STAYS HERE. Don't de-value your own subscription by giving away information to others who don't pay like you do. It's also a violation of our terms of service and will result in the termination of your subscription.[/B]
This post was edited on 2/11 1:47 PM by Jason Stamm
FOOTBALL, PRACTICE FACILITY
*The indoor practice facility is on time, on budget. They've been working seven days a week to make sure they can get out of the weather. It's been pretty smart planning and they've done a great job.
**The graphics package in there, that RP goes out this week. All the presentations are due in March. We hope to award the project the first week in April and have it done July 1, which is corresponding with the finished product. The sound and video is all set to video is set to go out. We know what we want, it's just getting it priced right. It's pre-wired, so it's just a matter of buying the equipment and hooking it up. It'll all go back to the studio, so it's set up nice. We're hoping to finish in July, so when pre-season starts, we've got it.
LANE STADIUM
*We're working on concession improvements. We wanna work hard on trying to fix up the east side, the lower east side. Some of that stuff is getting pretty old. We'll take our first run at it this year. I'm not sure if we'll get all of it done, but it'll be an improvement.
MERRYMAN CENTER
We're doing a study to spruce up the Merryman. I've showed it the Hokie Club, shown it to the Board of Directors, showed it to football. Canon Design, who did the Hahn Hurst graphics and designed the building and did the graphics for the football locker room, we retained them to take a fresh look. Their first run was nice, but it was pretty conservative. Kevin Jones has a degree in design engineering and he challenged them to get outside the box and come up with some pretty nice stuff. It's a money thing and timing thing, but our goal is to freshen up the whole look when you come into Merryman. I don't know when we'll get it done, but I know we wanna get it done as soon as we can. 1998 is dated. It's amazing how quick things get dated. It's all money. If we get enough of it, we'll spend it.
CASSELL COLISEUM
*The next step is an upgrade in the graphics package that will go in after the season. It's all set to go. We wanted to squeeze it in earlier, but you've gotta play basketball. It'll have a little more of Buzz and what he stands for, which is how we should do it. The hallway that goes to the locker room will be a lot nicer. The men's basketball side will have a lot of new stuff on the walls, some high-tech stuff. The women are getting involved on their side, too. Dennis Wolff has chipped in a little bit. It's one of those buildings that you wanna continue to keep it fresh if you can. Buzz is a breath of fresh air for sure.
**The company is doing a prototype color lead, that'll give us some more color. They're gonna give us four, one for each color of the catwalk. When we do introductions next year, we'll have it to enhance the intros even more. The camera guys love it.
***That west side, when you open doors on a cold day to let people in, you're freezing out the people in sections six and eight. My goal is ton create another entrance west of there, to kinda buffer them and then dress it up and make it look like something more than it is.
***We're redoing our video offices. We moved the studio down to our post-game press conference room in Cassell Coliseum. That's what the green wall is up there for. And we turned the old studio into more offices because they're getting bigger. The room will just double as a studio during the week, which is probably good because they have the sound boards up in there.
RECTOR FIELDHOUSE
*We finished the feasibility study on that. The goal is to renovate Rector Field House, to add a new softball hitting facility in the front of it, take the trailers off the the north end, which is used for halftime rooms for soccer and lacrosse and actually build more permanent halftime rooms. It'll double for ACC indoor championship press room and officials and food.
**The throws area in Rector is getting to where the athletes are throwing that weight so well that they one-hopped it into the garage door in the last meet and tore up the garage door. That's fine, I can fix the garage door, but in two or three years, if they hit that garage door, then you've got a world record throw and you can't count it. So we probably need to address that and that's part of the plan. We'll go to the board of visitors in March with the asking authorization to actually plan. That takes you to schematic design and deciding what you wanna do next.
460 FUTURE INTERCHANGE
*The runway to the airport will expand and the dairy barn will go away. They're gonna block off Southgate Drive, not now, but ultimately when they finish. The campus entrance will then move somewhere halfway between where Main Street comes across and where Southgate is. There will be a big interchange built there, directly into the corporate research park and directly into campus. That allows the runway to expand without any problems. The dairy barn will be moved in June, building a new one at Ketlin Farms. That's almost done, so it will move this summer.
As far as traffic,
**I wanna think they've got it figured out. They're crazy to make it too messy for football. And I think they've figured all that out. I think there will be a lot of work done, not touching 460 until they're ready to make the cut. There's been a lot of planning and the interchange will be beautiful. It's gonna have a real Tech look to it, which is interesting to be on a state road and have a Tech look to it, with Hokie Stone and arches and the whole bit. The last picture I saw was very attractive.
BASEBALL/TENNIS
We've got thoughts about expanding the baseball park, but nothing really in place yet. We just put in a new system, the first one in the country, that has all the indoor tennis courts that way, called Play Smart. It's six cameras on every court with a kiosk. You can train with it, turn the cameras on, see how much topspin is on your ball, how deep you hit it, cross court, serve speed, even draws the lines for you. We're the only school in the country that will have six courts equipped to do that. Princeton has one and California has a system. NC State is putting in a system like it, but our is a system that was designed by tennis players, for tennis players. I can't wait to get on it. You can say to the machine, 'I wanna hit cross-court forehands, but I want all of them within three feet of the baseline.' Electronically, it draws a square on the screen and if you hit it in there, it gives you a beep and keeps score for you. That's really good for our tennis program. Jim Thompson and Mary Ann have done a good job and it'll just help them recruit, plus help our guys get better.
And as always, what's posted here, STAYS HERE. Don't de-value your own subscription by giving away information to others who don't pay like you do. It's also a violation of our terms of service and will result in the termination of your subscription.[/B]
This post was edited on 2/11 1:47 PM by Jason Stamm
