I just left my 45th Reunion at Franklin and Marshall College. My core group, minus a few individuals who could not make the weekend, were in attendance. We had a blast, meeting with the former F&M baseball coach, Ken Twiford, and the winningest Division III basketball coach, Glenn Robinson, who started his career at F&M during our tenure at the school. Old stories were retold; the aches and pains of growing old were discussed at length; families were talked about. Most of all we were happiest to be among friends who still had a lot in common.
Reunions get me back to campus. So do the yearly football game and a basketball or baseball game on occasion. I have seen F&M transform from a small, liberal arts college in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, to a bigger, more modern and now, a somewhat taller campus. F&M still promotes itself as that small college, and to a significant extent, that is true.
What has happened is that, while the student body size has not grown, the campus has expanded greatly. Many new buildings have popped up; in my days at F&M, the psychology building left the immediate campus area because of the classroom and laboratory crunch which had arisen. More recently, the beautiful Alumni Sports Fitness Center (AFSC) was built in the early 1990's as a partial response to a leak in the old Fackenthal Pool on campus adjacent to Mayser Gym, which was the home to a number of sports teams. The AFSC was the first of any F&M buildings to move across the Harrisburg Pike, thus beginning the move towards a larger campus. Other buildings were to rise in that area--mostly business and retail facilities, jolting the Lancaster economy where there had once been factories and warehouses.
A master plan envisioned taking the historic home of F&M football, Sponaugle-Williamson Field, ensconced in the north end of campus--abutting Mayser Gym where the locker rooms are located--and putting a parking garage underneath it while placing student residences where the field had been. The football field would then be removed to a parcel of land beyond the AFSC, which once housed the Armstrong Cork factories and headquarters. Ultimately, the baseball and softball fields would be taken from their present homes on the Baker Campus and relocated to nearby the multipurpose stadium. This, along with a new track and a proposed addition to the AFSC for a basketball/volleyball gym, would complete the transformation of the athletic facilities to a locale that could rightly be called a sports complex.
I saw the progress on the new Shadek Stadium, named after my baseball teammate who is a Board of Trustees member; it is nice and new, but smaller than the current stadium. When completed, Shadek Stadium will be the crown jewel of F&M Athletics.
Stadiums, and to a lesser degree, arenas have been the focal points for many campuses. I have been to many schools, large and small, and I have seen that placement of the stadium can be contingent upon how the college or university plans its athletics. Notre Dame, Georgia and Alabama have the stadiums and arenas close to or in the midst of the academic buildings. The University of Pennsylvania, Bucknell and Florida also are among the schools which have their primary sports arenas in the middle of campus. I noted that every year Wesleyan University erects a stadium on Andrus Field, which is directly below the library, from where the picture below was taken.
Rutgers has High Point Solutions Stadium and its 52,000 seats on land in Piscataway where the old, 23,000 Rutgers Stadium sat and which is surrounded by fields, some of which have been themselves transformed a number of times and remain there for football parking.
At Rutgers, a whole other set of campuses has grown up in Piscataway, removed from the original Rutgers campus in land-locked New Brunswick. Baseball, softball, swimming and track are all nearby the Rutgers Athletic Center, which is apart from High Points Solutions Stadium. Livingston Gym is used for gymnastics and the old, small Rutgers Gym, across College Avenue from the main Library, still is home to some events.
LSU and Penn State built a whole complex of stadiums and athletic facilities on the edge of campus. They are within walking distance for students from campus yet are not disruptive to the flow and direction of the school. Lehigh has moved its athletic compound fairly far away from the main Asa Packer Campus to a vast Goodman Campus--even across Interstate 78, guaranteeing a bus or car ride to a game.
Obviously, schools prioritize athletics in largely different ways. Division I universities are far bigger animals than Division III colleges. In Division I, more people attend contests while the percentage of participants per the size of the school is much greater at the Division III level. Money and competitiveness are greater components in Division I. Yet at Division III colleges like F&M, emphasis on winning corresponds with recruiting and the amount of money budgeted for athletic facilities and teams.
Student-athletes are attracted to a college for a variety of reasons. They love shiny new buildings and fields to play on. Whether it is Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge or Mary Harden Baylor University, a Division III school (see below), the stadiums are upgraded to attract scholar-athletes.
Two of the most venerable academic schools, Princeton and Williams, built new stadiums on campus to attain wins by putting a modern face on their approach to outdoing their brethren.
So in that regard, F&M is no different among its peers. The football stadiums within the Centennial Conference are older, more established venues. Only Johns Hopkins University has a larger capacity than most at Homewood Field, due to its participation in Division I lacrosse in the lacrosse-mad hot bed of Baltimore and Maryland. Small wonder that Hopkins is perennially among the national Division III football powers.
Thus, to be competitive in football, F&M is compelled to upgrade its football stadium to attract the best talent. While money has been poured into the bowels of Mayser Gym for newer locker and theater-like video rooms for different groups of the offense and defense, that may not be enough. Which is where Shadek Stadium plays its part.
A lot of dealing among Lancaster General Hospital and the City of Lancaster as well as the Norfolk-Southern Railroad has allowed the extension of the F&M campus. An unsightly rail yard was uprooted and moved to permit Shadek Stadium to be built on the grounds of what is now known as Armstrong Fields.
I learned that there is discontent about the move off the academic part of the campus to an athletic hub a walk across Harrisburg Pike. Insistence about the tradition of playing on the field where F&M football had been for over a century can resonate only so much in today's collegiate marketplace. Given that Rutgers started football with Princeton in 1869 and the football field moved to its present site in Piscataway in 1938 and is the SECOND home for Rutgers football after the original College Field on campus was vacated in 1890, the tradition argument is not a winner.
F&M envisioned a master plan in 2010 for making an entire campus of academic and living places integrated within each other and removing vehicular parking while creating a central walkway through campus. The athletic portion of the plan was readjusted in 2012, which amended the idea of attaching a new arena to the AFSC. It is an 11 step process which has an elongated timeline, and is a guide subject to amendment.
The vision of F&M may not comport with that of some of the alumni. Alums resist change, although change is inevitable. Well-thought out plans for a campus can enrich the livelihood and sustainability of the institution, a fact the alumni should and do recognize by their generous support of their Alma Mater.
Athletics has been a corresponding component of academia for ages. Athletic competition, whether intramural or intercollegiate, is a fundamental part of any institution of higher education. Young men and women go to college to learn and grow into adults. As much as colleges integrate new techniques and ideas into the curriculum and provide the latest in technology for the students, so must the school offer the latest and safest environments for those attending and paying the skyrocketing costs of both public and private education.
Whether it is a newly-remodeled dorm with air-conditioning and modern living accouterments, a new arts building on the horizon or a football stadium with new locker rooms and lights plus nicer, seats for the spectators/alumni, it is incumbent upon colleges like F&M to be totally competitive academically and athletically while still being fiscally responsible in their goals. Tradition must take a back seat to modernization and enhancement of the school.
In the end, with the support of its alumni, the entirety of the changes to F&M will promote a new generation of critical thinkers with a full liberal arts education. Changes to the athletic facilities are a necessary facet of this process. It happens everywhere, with justification.
When we all return for the 50th Reunion, much of the reconfiguration of the campus will be underway. For all of the progress I have viewed in the past 45 years regarding the transformation of the F&M landscape, it is only fitting that athletics comes into line with the academic and building renovations as well as the regeneration of the city of Lancaster.
I can only imagine how much better the College will look to those of us who make it back to campus for our 60th Reunion in 2032.
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