The University of Vermont is set to receive $12 million in public funding to construct the biggest indoor sports and entertainment venue in the state.
They’re investing in the wrong sport. They won the national championship just 2 years ago in soccer, the fastest growing sport in youth interest. That’s what they should be investing in and building around.
Yes, but soccer doesn’t really generate revenue for the school nor attract prospective applicants. That said, $12M feels more like a budget for a modest high school gym upgrade as opposed to an arena at a flagship school aspiring to draw students by using it as a feature.
Not sure where the other $88M will come from but seems like it’s probably not the solution to their enrollment issues.
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Agree that this seems like a tiny ‘arena’ at a Flagship university. U of Wyoming is a similar size to Vermont and it has a basketball arena that seats 11,600. They also use it for graduation and other convention type events. Yes, it is the biggest arena in Wyo.
Soccer is usually played outdoors, including at UVM. Google says:
Amenities: Features a state-of-the-art synthetic turf surface, permanent grandstand seating for approximately 2,600 spectators, and a climate-controlled press box.
One high school my kids went to had a sports complex. It had a big arena with 2500 seats, 4 baseball/softball diamonds, a football field and track,. soccer fields, and a $1 million putting and chipping area (donated by a parent). It had a $10 million pool (outdoor) with permanent cement bleachers. The school made money by renting out all the facilities to local teams. It was lit so they had games going on at 2 am. I never drove by the school that those lights weren’t on, that there weren’t people in the pool, that there weren’t games on the baseball diamonds. Really, never.
Maybe UVM will make money, or maybe they need an indoor place to seat 5000 for graduations and other events. 5000 seats seems really small to me for a D1 school.
UVM is small for a state flagship - fewer than 14,000 students total, undergrad + grad students combined.
That’s why I compared it to Wyoming, which has a 14k arena and a football stadium (that Vermont doesn’t), although the stadium was built in 1950 and is not luxurious.
I think UVM probably needs an arena and not just a field house with a basketball court.
I would be surprised if the Burlington area could draw 14K people to show up to any school sporting event… UVM, itself, is mainly OOS students… I don’t have the most recent year (too lazy to look up) but the class of 27 was only 18% from VT -I would wager that translates to a fair number of residents also not being alums, etc. (I don’t think it is just VT is so small they can’t fill the college, it is people from VT go out of state…) https://www.uvm.edu/content/files/shared/undergraduate-admissions/counselor_guide.pdf?t=s33sgx
But they want it for events and concerts too.
I am hard pressed to see more than 1/3 of ALL students going to a concert at the same time, honestly. I could see 7,500 maybe, but I suspect they know what is up.
I don’t think BU or Northeastern has venues that can fit that much more than that… also large schools (and have more $$ - though far less access to land)
I think it’s consistent with the overall enrollment issue that UVM has been experiencing. Ultimately, the school is way too big for the population of the state. It’s totally out of whack with other flagships, and therefore totally dependent upon OOS students (and their OOS tuition). But, rather than “right size” the school through difficult decisions (contraction), they’re kind of pointing the finger elsewhere (literally blaming top tier schools for accepting students that ostensibly might have considered Vermont).
I like the school and know many that have had great outcomes. But, the enrollment trends (south, large and sports) is not in their favor and a new field house for a mid-major basketball program doesn’t strike me as the right answer.
My son graduated in 25, his class was the largest class I think UVM has ever had, so it’s not like this enrollment drop has been longstanding. The athletic facilities are long overdue for an overhaul, they were pretty bad. It remains a popular school with students here (mid-atlantic) and yes they absolutely depend on attracting out of state students due to VT’s demographics. Having decent gym facilities seem like a pretty important feature for most applicants today. They have also become more of a research powerhouse in the last couple of years, and have invested in more housing- I don’t think the answer is to get much smaller. This seems like a good move to me, I hope they can come up with the money for it.
Or they could drop sports altogether, or drop to D3. It would be very unusual for a flagship to be D3, but it could be done.
They might be able to fund it by renting out the facilities or having memberships. DU, which is D1 but doesn’t have football, has pretty nice facilities. The basketball arena converts to ice for the hockey team, plus other basketball courts and another sheet of ice), has an olympic size pool and a gymnastics performance gym and a practice gym. There is also a workout/climbing gym. The public can buy gym memberships and take youth lessons. My kids did hockey, figure skating, gymnastics, and attended a ton of birthday parties in the pool. A lot of high schools hold graduation in the area. It is run like a business so self supporting.
Colorado College has a very nice hockey arena and has youth and hs hockey out of that facility. For many years CC played at the Broadmoor and that was a dump, very much like a high school rink and it wasn’t close to campus. No one liked traveling to CC to play.