The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- January 4, 1999

Notes

Facilities: Rice University will construct a new state-of-the-art stadium for its baseball team in time for the 2000 season. The $6.4 million stadium will seat more than 3,400 people in the main grandstand area, and temporary bleachers will bring the total capacity to 5,667, enabling the university to host NCAA regional tournaments and other major events ... The University of Houston plans to renovate Robertson Stadium beginning in January, thanks to a $6 million gift from the John and Julie O'Quinn Foundation. The stadium, built in 1941, presently seats 20,000. Renovation plans include the addition of luxury suites and the replacement of the current track with a ring of tiered seating, bringing the seating capacity to more than 30,000 ... Gifts totaling $25 million will enable St. Mary's College (California) to build a new recreation and athletics facility, an enhancement of the Brother Albert Rahill Athletic Center. The college will team with the town of Moraga to complete a design review and approval process for the project, which will feature a new intercollegiate athletics building, aquatic center and recreation center.

Sports sponsorship: Georgia Southern University will add women's indoor and outdoor track and field beginning in the 1999-2000 academic year. The addition of the two programs brings the school's total female sports offerings to nine, including already established programs in volleyball, cross country, soccer, swimming, basketball, softball and tennis. To satisfy the financial ramifications that accompany the introduction of women's indoor and outdoor track, the school also announced the discontinuation of the men's cross country and the men's swimming programs ... Quinnipiac College will add women's ice hockey as a varsity sport beginning in the 2000-01 academic year.

Conferences: Bucknell University's wrestling team, under the direction of second-year coach John Hangey, will join the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) in the 1999-2000 season. Bucknell, a member of the East Coast Wrestling Association since the 1990-91 season, will join the U.S. Military Academy; Brown University; Columbia University; Cornell University; East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania; Franklin & Marshall College; Harvard University; Lehigh University; the U.S. Naval Academy; the University of Pennsylvania; Princeton University; Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick; and Syracuse University in the EIWA. "This move puts us more in accordance with the Patriot League and the Ivy Group," said Hangey. "Academically, since the schools in the EIWA are need-based financial aid (like Bucknell), we will be competing against the same kinds of student-athletes."

Milestones: Jim Davis, Clemson University, 250 wins in men's basketball ... The recent Syracuse University-Santa Clara University men's basketball game was the 1,000th contest of coach Jim Boeheim's tenure at Syracuse. He has accumulated 79 games as a player, 204 as an assistant coach and 717 games as a head coach. The victory over Santa Clara was Boeheim's 535th as head coach of the Orangemen.

-- Compiled by Gary T. Brown