VCU's Future Athletic Village

 From: VCU's Chris Kowalczyk: 

The executive committee of VCU’s Board of Visitors on March 25 approved the purchase of 10.94 acres of land on Hermitage Road in Richmond, Va., to be used as part of its future VCU Athletics Village.

The land is owned and occupied by Greyhound Lines, Inc., as a maintenance facility. The $11.75 million transaction, which has been in negotiations for many months, will close today, March 26, to meet constraints imposed by the close of Greyhound’s fiscal year on March 31.

“This acquisition represents an important step in the future of our university and our Central Virginia Community,” said VCU President Michael Rao. “It enables VCU Athletics to move operations from core campus areas and free them for much-needed new academic facilities, including a STEM building now under construction at the site of the former Franklin Street Gym.

“From a gender equity perspective, this project helps us align more properly with our peers across the country. We have taken steps to significantly improve the student-athlete experience,” he said.

The Athletics Village project is one that will contribute to the economic and cultural vitality of the Richmond area, Rao said.

Besides replacing the Franklin Street Gym, the One VCU Master site plan also calls for vacating the Thalhimer Tennis Center located near the center of VCU’s Monroe Park Campus. Under the plan, the VCU Athletics Village includes a new indoor/outdoor tennis center, an indoor multipurpose facility, practice fields and a new home for baseball.

“The majority of our sports have suffered from inadequate facilities for many years. We have worked on this part of the project for more than two years to get to this step. We have several steps remaining on other key parcels of land, but this project demonstrates our commitment to providing world-class Division 1 facilities so our student-athletes can compete for championships at the highest level,” said Ed McLaughlin, Vice President and Director of Athletics. “We look forward to working with local and state officials and community leaders to finalize the project soon and shape a vision that can transform the area.”

McLaughlin said the purchase is being financed through a low-interest loan to be paid with Athletics Department revenues. He said no state or tuition funding is involved in the transaction.

About Music

When I was a young I enjoyed hearing my grandmother tell about my affection for The Weavers recording of this song. Their version of "Goodnight Irene" was popular when I was two years old. So I heard it on the radio and on jukeboxes. According to my grandmother (who was a nurse and an excellent pianist), this scene played out in a restaurant with a big, lit up jukebox.

Anyway, I loved "Goodnight Irene" and would play it over and over. As it played I would sway (dance?) with the music and hug the jukebox, as the sound and vibrations transported me into another dimension. The best part of this tale is that I remember that jukebox. It was green. "Goodnight Irene" is the first popular song I fell in love with. And this story is one of my earliest memories.

Music has always affected me in ways no other art does. I grew up in a house with my grandparents, who were both musicians ... but they had day jobs. My grandfather was a barbershop quartet bass and a backup singer for various recording sessions, mostly done in D.C., when I was a little kid. My exposure to their music and that of their friends who came over to sing, standing around the piano, left quite a mark on me.

And, I suppose others have a story about a childhood memory of a particular song. There's mine.

A Lucky Break

The Biograph Naturals, 1981-82 CBA champions.

Note: The CBA was the Central Basketball Alliance. It lasted three seasons: 1980-81, 1981-82 and 1982-83.

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During the month of March, each year, the season for the men's basketball conference tournaments and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is a blessing. The surprises and suspenseful moments of the games help get basketball junkies, like me, through those last tedious days of winter.

Of course, to be a junkie in full bloom one must still play the game. Since I quit playing basketball in 1994, I suppose I’ve been a junkie in recovery. Yes, I’ll always miss the way a perfectly-released jump shot felt as it left my fingertips. Nothing in my life has replaced the satisfaction that came from stealing the ball from an opponent, just as he stumbles over his hubris. It's especially nice when, as a result, you get an uncontested layup -- providing, of course, you don't miss the snowbird. 

Every March, as my favorite teams are eliminated and my brackets crumble, I cling to the notion that by the time of the Final Four games, the warm spring weather will have arrived ... and baseball season will already be underway. Although I enjoyed playing basketball more than baseball and softball, in my sorely missed playing days, baseball was my first love in sports.

The years I've spent covering college basketball, as a writer, have helped to soothe my basketball jones. Since the improvisational aspect of basketball has always appealed to me, from a seat on press row it's fun to watch particular players who have a special knack for seizing the moment. If it's a player you've seen plenty of, sometimes, from the expression on his face, you can sense what he's about to do, sort of like it was when you played and knew your teammates' moves so well. 

While basketball is in some ways a finesse game, more than a power game like football -- injury-wise -- if you play enough of basketball there are some brutal truths it will inevitably serve up. And, although I’ve heard people claim that we can’t remember pain, I have not forgotten what it felt like to dislocate my right ankle on the afternoon of April 20, 1985; I was undercut finishing an out-of-control, one-on-five fast break.

While I'd love to say the ball went in the basket, I don't remember that part. What I do remember is flopping around on the hardwood floor, like a fish out of water; literally, out of control. Take it from me, dear reader, popping your foot off the end of your leg hurts way too much to forget -- think James Caan in “Misery” (1990).

But this story is about another injury. On March 4, 1982, my then-34-year-old nose was broken during the course of a basketball game. In that time, the Biograph Theatre, which I managed, had a men's team in a league called the Central Basketball Alliance. Other teams were sponsored by the Track, Soble’s, Hababa’s, the Jade Elephant, etc. Personnel-wise, the CBA was an off-shoot of the Fan District Softball League, with some of the same characters. 

The morning after my nose was bashed in by an opponent’s upwardly thrust elbow, while I was coming down from a failed attempt at snatching a rebound, I went to Stuart Circle Hospital to have the damage checked.

My nose wasn’t just broken, it had been split open at the bridge in three or four directions. The emergency room doc used Super Glue and a butterfly clamp to put it all back together. This was before such glue had been approved for use in this country, so he asked me not to tell anyone what he had done; I hope the statute of limitations has run out.

After getting an X-ray I was waiting around in the hospital lobby to sign some papers and my grandmother -- Emily “Villa” Collins Owen -- was wheeled by. She was stretched out on a hospital bed. As I grew up in her home and was still very close to her, it had the same panic impact as seeing one’s parent in such an abrupt context.

We spoke briefly. She said she was feeling a little weak from a cold and had decided to spend the night in the hospital. She lived just a few blocks away. Pretending to ignore my gripping sense of panic, I calmly assured Nana (pronounced Ny-nuh) I’d be back during visiting hours, to see how she was doing.

That evening I took my then-12-year-old daughter, Katey, with me to see Nana. The doctor came in her room and told us she’d be fine with a good night’s rest. Katey and I spent a half-hour making our 83-year-old Nana laugh as best she could ... feeling a little weak.

Six decades before this she had trained to be a nurse at that same hospital, which has now been converted into condos. Nana died later that night; it was in the wee hours of the morning that followed. When the phone call from her doctor came, the news sent a shock-wave through my being unlike anything else, before or since. 

AS that news sunk in I realized that had luck not interposed a fate-changing elbow to my beak, Katey and I may not have had that last precious visit with Nana. Knowing my grandmother, I'm not at all sure she would have let anybody know she was in the hospital. At least, not right away.

Which means I have to say the palooka who elbowed me in that basketball game did me a favor. Perhaps in more ways than one.

You see, in order to keep playing in the Biograph’s games in that season, I needed to protect my nose while it healed. So, I got one of those protective aluminum nose-guards I’d seen players wear. It was a primitive version of the clear plastic masks in use today.

As a kid, I saw future-NBA great Jerry West wearing such a broken-nose-protector when he was playing his college ball at West Virginia. It impressed the 12-year-old version of me to no end; I marveled at how tough and focused West was.

So, wearing what was to me a Jerry West mask, I played the rest of the CBA season -- maybe five more games. Now I have to believe that period was about the best basketball I ever played. Maybe not wanting another whack to the nose made me a little more careful. Maybe more purposeful, too, which is probably a good trait for a point guard to have.

Anyway, it apparently was just what my game had been needing. Our team didn’t lose another game that year; the Biograph Naturals won the league’s championship. In looking back on those weeks after my grandmother's death, I can easily see that in testing my nerve, in a fashion after the way West had tested his, in the spring of 1982 I was living out a boyhood dream. Some of the game's lucky breaks can only be detected in the rear-view mirror.

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Note: If you've seen some other team pictures in which I am clowning around, truth be told, there are plenty of them. So you might ask: wasn't I aware that one day I might cringe at how silly some of them look? Of course I was hip to that likelihood, nonetheless, in those days I liked to play tricks on whoever was handy ... even on myself in the future.

-- 30 --

Flashback: The 1994 Virginia Senate race

In the summer of 1994 O.J. Simpson-related material was on television round-the-clock. Meanwhile, a four-way political race developed in Virginia, as three candidates emerged to challenge the incumbent Chuck Robb for his seat in the U.S. Senate.

Republican Ollie North was nominated by a convention at the Richmond Coliseum. Former governor Doug Wilder, a Democrat, threw his hat in as an Independent. Finally, Marshall Coleman, a Republican former attorney general and failed gubernatorial candidate, ran as an Independent, too.

Naturally, both Wilder and Coleman were seen immediately as spoilers by many observers. The few members of the national press that weren't assigned to the story of Simpson's soon-to-begin trial were all over the circus-like story of the quartet of candidates in Virginia. Although Robb was the incumbent, North was easily the biggest celebrity in the group. Of course, Wilder might have argued that point.

In late August, I issued what was then my fourth set of collectible cards -- “Campaign Inkbites: The ‘94 VA Senate Race.”

After swearing he was in the race 'til the finish, the mercurial Wilder withdrew in October. The wooden Coleman stayed the course, with stubborn Sen. John Warner as his chief backer. North, ever the checkered-shirted dandy, raised and spent over $25 million; what was then a new record for the most ever in a U.S. Senate race ... any state. In the end the awkward Robb outlasted them all and won reelection.

Beneath the 1994 newspaper article about that card collection are scans of 12 of the 15 original cards from the set. With 26 years of dust on the cards, some of my attempts at humor may not work so well now, maybe some of the caricatures are still fun to look at. As I produced these cards, it was an interesting challenge to try to write lines for the dialogue balloons that would hold up for a month or two, no matter what the developments.

Right out of the gate, this edition of political cartoons, adapted into a card format, was lucky with publicity. The Virginian-Pilot article reprinted below, by Poole and Yancy, kicked off what might have been seen for a few weeks as a "mini-fad."

Sept. 6, 1994: David Poole and Dwayne Yancey

Odds and ends from the past week of Virginia's U.S. Senate campaign: I'll swap you two Doug Wilders for a Tai Collins. The colorful U.S. Senate race has spawned a set of trading cards featuring the four candidates and a host of supporting characters - including the former Miss Virginia who gave a nude massage to Chuck Robb in a New York hotel.

There’s U.S. Sen. John Warner sounding defensive about his hand-picked candidate, Marshall Coleman: “Why should I strain to name an office he hasn't sought, or an abortion stance he hasn't taken? The point is: Marshall isn't Ollie.”

There’s conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh assessing the race: “The choice in Virginia is simple. You’ve got a stained, lap-dog liberal, a bleached and petulant liberal, a fair-weather conservative, and a genuine, world-class hero.”

There’s political pundit Larry Sabato reporting on the latest poll results: “Fifty-one percent said the race is so embarrassing they plan to leave the state.”

The “Campaign Inkbites” are the brainchild of F.T. Rea, a Richmond artist who a decade ago issued a similar deck of cards commemorating a massive death-row escape at Mecklenberg Correctional Center [by the notorious Briley brothers and four others]. The set of 15 Senate cards is available at Biff’s bookstore [also at Chickens, the snack bar in the State Capitol] in Richmond for $12 a pack.

The most unflattering likeness in the set is that of Sabato, whose green skin gives him the look of a vampire.

“Ironically, he’s my best customer,” Rea said of Sabato. “He bought 12 packs.”

Then an AP story written by Martha Slud ran. Lots of newspapers (1, 2) picked it up and printed various versions of it. Some ran the whole piece, as shown below, others edited it down.

Then came a five-minute report on the card set by reporter Bob Woodruff that appeared on CNN.

Previously, Woodruff had done a report on earlier card project of mine. As it happened, I just happened to run into him and he asked what I was up to. All that publicity prompted political memorabilia collectors from far and wide to buy the cards through the mail.

STYLE Weekly then asked me to do a cover and a five-page spread of cartoons on the same campaign. That feature ran in the Oct. 18, 1994, issue.

It was a wild ride.

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Note: Click on any of the cards or the article to enlarge them.