Congratulations USI Screaming Eagles



GLVCSports.com

Yesterday, we received some more great news to go with the Evansville Rage winning their first ever game. After erasing a 10 point half-time deficit, the University of Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles claimed their third GLVC Tournament Title. They will now play KWC in the first round of the NCAA Div II Tournament. That's the good news.

The bad news is that local residents did not get to see this victory in person unless they drove all the way over to the Prairie Capital Convention Center in Springfield, IL. In previous years, this GLVC Tournament was held right here in Evansville at Roberts Stadium. Unfortunately, it became too expensive for them to remain here so the tournament moved elsewhere.

The GLVC Tournament is just one of many reasons why we need to keep Roberts Stadium and use it as a mid-sized arena. Contrary to what the previous city hall wants you to believe, one size DOES NOT fit all. The Ford Center is an excellent venue for our city to have for when we go to convince the NCAA to move their Division II Elite 8 from the Bank of Kentucky Center to the Ford Center.

However, the Ford Center is not a fit for the GLVC Tournament. This past week, the tournament saw attendance figures range from 315...

 http://www.glvcsports.com/custompages/mbball/2011/2011stats/glvc6.htm

to 531...

http://www.glvcsports.com/custompages/mbball/2011/2011stats/glvc10.htm

The GLVC Tournament is not looking for a 9,400 seat arena with all new modern bells and whistles. Rather, they are looking for an affordable venue where they can play in front of near capacity crowds while leaving room for attendance expansion at the same time.

Why did the GLVC opt out of Roberts Stadium in 2007?

(bolding has been added by me)

 http://tristatehomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=3645

"After nine years at Evansvilles Roberts Stadium, the Great Lakes Valley Conference is ending its affiliation with the venue. Roberts has hosted the GLVC mens and womens basketball tournaments since 1998 Financial concerns, and not the facility, is the cause for the split, according to GLVC tourney officials."

""It is a big venue for Division II basketball," Hall said Monday. "Its a struggle to fill that many seats." The tournament filled the stadium in years like 2000, when Owensboro based Kentucky Wesleyan College and USI played in the mens championship game. But the rise of other basketball powers in the conference has seen attendance slip."

"Despite an ongoing dialog in the community about the future of Roberts, Hall says the facility was more than adequate to handle the needs of the GLVC."           

Obviously, if the GLVC left because Roberts Stadium was too big and expensive, building the Ford Center isn't going to do anything to bring them back. This is our opportunity to fix the problem of having too many seats in Roberts Stadium. By raising the floor and eliminating a few rows of seats, we will be scaling the seating capacity down to a level that event organizers like the GLVC can work with.

Although the GLVC Tournament isn't drawing the numbers it use to, it is still worth the investment as Springfield saw an economic impact of $100,000 from the teams alone (not counting fans and guests)...

http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-7017-ncaa-basketball-comes-to-springfield.html

The GLVC Baseball Tournament, which is only expected to bring in 2,000 guests to Bosse Field, is estimated to bring in $800,000 to Evansville this year...

http://www.glvcsports.com/news/2012/2/10/BSB_0210124950.aspx

Basically, one GLVC Tournament would pay off the vast majority of our bill to raise the floor and fix the roof on the new part of the building. It would also be a shot in the arm for both USI basketball and the GLVC Tournament who were known to pack Roberts Stadium by the thousands, not hundreds, when USI played rivals like KWC and NKU. Although those teams are moving on, USI basketball will still form rivals with other teams like Bellarmine that will draw crowds large enough to fill a mid-sized Roberts Stadium.

Not only do we need to keep Roberts Stadium for the GLVC Tournament, we also need to utilize it for USI preseason tournaments, graduations, and 1-2 regular season games a year. This will allow us to bring in the amount of people necessary to keep our Innkeepers Tax solvent while promoting USI as well. We can do all of this while not even coming close to competing with the Ford Center!

Congratulations USI and I hope to someday see you cutting down the nets at the GLVC Tournament in Roberts Stadium once again!

USI.edu