As we transition to our spring sports season, now is a perfect time to update Mountaineer fans on the many great things happening here at West Virginia University.

 

Construction work on the East and North concourses at Milan Puskar Stadium continues with everything on target for Mountaineer football’s season-opening game against Missouri on Saturday, September 3. I am confident the improvements we are making will significantly enhance your experience at home football games, and I can’t wait until the entire project is completed in 2017.

 

I encourage you to take a look at this video posted yesterday on our website to get a look at how the new concourse is taking shape.

 

I am also extremely pleased with the progress we’ve made on the Milan Puskar Stadium crown removal project, which began shortly after Thanksgiving. All reports I have been receiving indicate the field should be available for the team to use when summertime conditioning work commences.

 

Meanwhile, I couldn’t be happier with how our beautiful, new Steve Antoline Family Football Practice Field has turned out. It’s an area that now gives our student-athletes and coaches a first-class venue in which to prepare for the season.

 

My gratitude goes out to Steve, his family and the Mountaineer Athletic Club for helping make this happen so quickly. This is yet another example of how the generosity of great Mountaineer supporters such as the Antolines can turn our dreams into reality.

 

Over on the other side of town, work is now well underway on significant improvements to the WVU Coliseum concourse. We have an ambitious construction schedule ahead of us in order to wrap this project up in time for basketball season, and there will be minor inconveniences along the way, but I am confident the finished product is going to be something of which all Mountaineer fans are proud. In the meantime, we are continuing to explore ways of improving our parking situation at the Coliseum as well.

 

As far as this round of facility improvements is concerned, we have one more major construction project about to begin later this spring when work starts on our exciting, new 12,000-square-foot Olympic sports weight training facility, which is going to provide a major boost to the entire athletic department.

 

It’s important to understand that facilities don’t win championships, but they are part of the formula that I believe will help us recruit the type of student-athletes we need to win championships and help us attract and retain high-quality coaches.

 

Speaking of our coaches and student-athletes, we had another very successful winter sports season that saw the rifle team capture its fourth consecutive national championship and 18^th overall. I want to congratulate freshman Ginny Thrasher for winning the individual air and smallbore national championships, becoming just the second shooter in school history to sweep individual titles. What Jon Hammond and his outstanding group of shooters have done during the last four years is nothing short of amazing, and we salute them once again on another job well done.

 

The performances put forth by the men’s and women’s basketball teams this year were also very gratifying. The men were predicted to finish in the middle of the pack in the Big 12 and ended up placing second behind Kansas and ranking eighth in the final AP poll, while the women also exceeded preseason expectations by placing third and reaching the NCAA Tournament for the sixth time in the last seven years.

 

The men and women have many key players returning from teams that ended this season ranked in the Top 25, and I anticipate a lot of excitement next fall when we open our newly refurbished WVU Coliseum.

 

I was also happy to see continued progress being made in women’s gymnastics, wrestling and swimming and diving, and I am confident those winter programs will maintain their upward trek.

 

In the meantime, I encourage you to go to our Mountaineer Athletic Club website and check out our Spring Caravan schedule, which gets underway later this evening with our annual Charleston dinner.

 

We will also be making stops in Martinsburg on April 26, in my hometown, Parkersburg, on April 27, and in Wheeling on April 28.

 

I can’t wait to get out and see everybody to share ideas on how we can continue to make our department a point of pride for Mountaineer fans everywhere!

 

Until then,

 

Let’s Go Mountaineers!