Dear Editor:
The March 6 edition of The Current featured a front page article on the proposed addition of two baseball fields on the MCC-Longview campus. As with most proposed changes in the status quo, those in opposition or in favor come forward to express their thoughts. As the Athletic Director who oversees the program that these fields would benefit, I’d like to expand on the positive aspects that this project would provide to MCC-Longview.
As your article outlined, an outside group has offered to build a new baseball complex on our campus, a donation amounting to between $6 million and $10 million. This construction will cost the MCC college district and Longview nothing. In exchange for the donation, Longview would allow the Ban Johnson League to use the fields several evenings a week from early June through mid-July. These fields would belong to Longview and the athletic department/baseball team would have control over the use of these fields at all times.
The new fields would drastically improve the quality of facilities we offer our students, reduce the amount of water used and all costs associated with maintaining existing field as well as provide fields that are safer than what we currently use. Lights on the field would allow us to schedule our games later in the day so fewer classes would be missed by the athletes. I anticipate a reduction in the travel budget as more teams will want to play at Longview due to later start times and less chance of rainouts due to the artificial surface. In the off-season these new fields would allow the baseball program to offer camps, clinics, show-cases, and tournaments for revenue production. With the combination of a lower up-front cost to maintain the fields and the potential for revenue production, these fields would benefit our budget.
As a comprehensive community college, MCC-Longview offers a variety of co-curricular programs. Whether one chooses to be involved with forensics, drama, athletics, newspaper, student government, or one of our many campus clubs, Longview students can enhance their college experience by joining one of these programs. All of these programs, although offered outside of the traditional classroom setting, provide invaluable lessons and experiences for our students and are an important component of our college mission. To our students these are not “fringe programs” and they should not be marginalized. MCC-Longview is fortunate to be one of 571 community colleges in the country offering athletics as an optional co-curricular program for their students. In my experience, all of the programs at Longview, academic and co-curricular, strive to excel. Our baseball program has done an outstanding job recently in representing MCC-Longview at the national level, winning the NJCAA National Championship in 2007 and placing 5th in the national tournament in 2008.
When one weighs the plusses and minuses of the proposed project, the dollar amount or the “fairness” of the ear-marked donation, budgets, or the location of the fields, one should not forget that ultimately students would benefit the most from the collaboration between MCC-Longview and the Ban Johnson League.
John O’Connell
Longview Athletic Director
