Colin Rajala
Trove: It certainly seems that way and I appreciate that perspective, Bryan. To kind of shift gears a little bit, the basketball practice facility has been a long time coming. The school has finally announced the plans and I wanted to see if you could provide an update. Last time I heard there was work being done inside the building and shovels in the ground was slated to happen soon. When are you expecting shovels in the ground and what is the timeline for the project currently?
Felt: I remember my first day on the job in late August, four years ago now, boy time flies, I remember looking at those original plans. It was the first look at the plans that I got and I remember being so excited that day. We kind of retooled them since, so we spent a good amount of time in that regard. We reengaged with architects, went through some retooling for the project. Coach Willard, who was at the time was very involved, myself and others like Coach Bozzella, took some time to really identify what we needed. Then, I think it’s been well publicized, we ran into some obstacles and some hurdles over the last year, but we've gotten there, there is work going on in the building. Part of the field house is shut down, they’re currently installing a steel wall right now that they need to have up and operational before school starts this week for safety reasons to separate the construction from the field house, so we continue to have programming going on in there for students, which is critically important.
So that part of the project is almost complete and while a shovel technically hasn't been put in the ground yet, we’re only moments away from it, quite frankly, they just need to get some of the stuff up and running. A lot of materials have been getting delivered so it’s a reality. You hear the construction noise and it's awesome because I tell people all the time, construction is simply the sound of progress!
Fundraising has gone well. We've gotten to a number where we were able to break ground, which was critical. And we have two years left to complete our fundraising efforts, which I am incredibly confident that we will be successful in that. The building will be about a two-year project, so we're really excited about this. Between Tony and Sha, they’ve had a great say into shaping how it will look and how they think the functionality will be for each team. It's just going to be remarkable when it's all said and done. We also plan on having a ceremonial groundbreaking in October on University Day. More details on that soon.
