Q&A with Dr. Stan Aldridge

I sat down with Dr. Aldridge the week before spring break to discuss to possibility of a football program at GC&SU, who will win it all this year for college basketball, and what he has in store for the baseball and softball fields at West Campus

Q: Coach Mrowka, former head baseball coach, left last season and Coach Thees, former softball head coach, just left. Should GC&SU be seen as a stepping-stone to a bigger coaching position?

A: Both Coach Thees and Coach Mrowka have proven over a long period of time that they are very capable coaches. With Coach Mrowka, he feels like George Washington is a steeping-stone and I think his ultimate goal is to be back in the SEC or the ACC and you can’t make that step from the Peach Belt. If things go well for him there then in I think in five or six years you can look for his name to pop up as the chance for a coach. With Windy’s situation I think she was very happy here. I think both of them were, but it was something she couldn’t turn down Memphis was starting a new program and had a half million budget, they have a 1.2 million dollar stadium, a huge raise and a four year contract. She is young, she is very marketable, she is an excellent coach, and she is female, which helps. There are a lot of opportunities for females in athletics. It was a situation she could not afford to turn down. I think it is a stepping-stone, it is not an automatic stepping-stone, you have to come in and do the kind of job over a length of time then it can be a stepping-stone.

Q: Finish this sentence: Georgia College & State University will get a football team if…

A: I think we will have a football team if the long-term goal is to grow to be a big university. If that is not the case, then getting a football team is just not affordable. I have investigated it several times and I have talked with Valdosta State University about their program. They spend $2 million a year on football and it brings in $140,000 in gate admissions. If you turn that around look at what that costs you as a student. That is the only place to make up the lost revenue other than a few donations. Unless we want to be like Valdosta, Georgia Southern, West Georgia that started football and grew as an institution to 16 or 18 thousand, then it really isn’t fair to you guys. We would have to increase the athletic fee by $200 in order to afford it and not just totally do away with other sports. Our total budget, including salaries and scholarships is less than $2 million. We would have to do away with everything to have a football program. And the other thing, except with Georgia Southern, is that students come out of high school wanting a football program, then they come to a university because it has a football program and then they don’t go to the games. They sit at home and watch other teams on television and the average Division II attendance is probably less than a thousand. Having a football program is expensive. It is something people think they want and brag about their teams, but they don’t go see them play. If the student body came in here and said they would pay the additional fee to have a football team, then I think it would be a great thing.

Q: I have heard rumors that the athletic department is looking to renovate the baseball and softball fields at West Campus. Is there any truth to those rumors?

A: There is a lot of truth to those rumors. Our facilities at West Campus were, 10 years ago, probably the best in the conference and we want to totally redo them. The restrooms are way in the back. The concession stand and the press box for the baseball field look atrocious. What we would like to do is redo the dugouts so that they look like the new apartments at West Campus. Next, build a press box for softball and redo the press box for baseball, and if we can afford to, build a concession stand near the entrance that best serves both baseball and softball. If we do that, then beneath both two-story softball press box we want to put a small training room under the softball one, and under the baseball one put restrooms and a small dressing facilities for officials. I hope we will start in June and complete it this summer.

Q: Many division I schools are getting in trouble with the NCAA, for example UGA with the Coach Harrick fiasco, what is GC&SU doing to stay out of trouble? What is the difference with GC&SU?

A:Recruiting is not a problem for us because we do not have a whole lot of money [laughs]. The general answer is that we work very closely with our compliance coordinator and me and our faculty athletics representative in the registers office to make sure we are staying within the guidelines. The biggest thing is that we monitor our athletics from an academic standpoint we check their grades, we check their continual progress semester by semester, and we try to recruit kids that can stay in school. We have been very successful t that over the past five or six years our GPA has been a little better then the average student on campus. That helps more than anything

Q: This year, both the men and women’s basketball team got knocked out in the first round of the Peach Belt Conference Tournament. What are you most proud of regarding these teams?

A: First of all, I think this is the first year that we have had both teams knocked out in the first round. The women are a team with a lot of physical talent, but they don’t have a lot of shooters. The thing I am proud of with both teams is how hard they play on the floor. I think the men made a big stride forward from last year. Last year was probably the toughest [Head] Coach Sellers ever had. This year, by recruiting the people he has, he now has players that work very hard, and play hard. It is one of those years where you can look back and say we should have won five or six more games. But realistically you can also look back and say we should have lost just as many. It was a year where we didn’t have a great scorer on either team, we didn’t have the go-to person that you know will get you twenty points and twelve rebounds a night. I think both teams did an incredible job with the talent that have and the effort they gave. If both teams can go out and recruit a couple of scorers then we will be right in the thick of things next year.

Q: With the name change possibility, how will that affect athletics for example with the jerseys and the basketball court?

It will affect it a lot. Probably it will not affect the floor as much as you might expect. Every year we put a new coat of varnish on the floor and one time during the process we got a bad coat of varnish on it and it is peeling. It is not very obvious from a distance but every time you put a new coat you can notice. So what we are going to have to do, whether we change the name or not, is sand the court all the way down the wood and repaint it. So if we are going to do a name change then from the floor’s standpoint it is the perfect time to do it. From a standpoint of uniforms, last time we changed uniforms from brown and gold Colonials to blue and green Bobcats it probably cost us in the area of $45,000 to change uniforms. I don’t know how drastic the change is going to be. If we can continue to use the uniforms and just phase them out, then it will not be a huge expense. If we have to do it all at one time it will probably be $55,000 or $65,000.

Q: We are in the thick of March Madness, I want to know who you have winning it all?

A: The easy pick would be Illinois. They have had a great year; they are a great team. They have got to be the favorites going in. But if I had to pick someone else, it would probably be North Carolina with their success.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 25 2005. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry