The President's Perspective is a quarterly column in Canisius College Magazine. The following appeared in the spring 2008 issue.
We arrive at the end of a most eventful academic year with our commencement exercises, year-end convocations and meetings, and celebrations of scholarly accomplishments by our faculty and students.
We also close out the academic year with the most successful spring athletic campaign in recent memory. Our men’s lacrosse team and our women’s softball team won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championships and advanced to the NCAA tournament. Our women’s lacrosse team advanced to the semifinal game of the conference championship. Men’s baseball rebounded from only four wins in the 2001-2002 season to finish with a regular season record of 40-11, a school record, and won the conference title for only the second time in program history. And thanks to the performance of all our teams, Canisius won the annual Battle of the Bridge competition with Niagara, as a result of their overall success in head-to-head meetings with our local rival.
Is it time to break up the Griffs? Hardly, but this is welcome news to Athletics Director Bill Maher and his staff who have been working to reap the benefits of our new approach to athletics. The results this spring are a testament to the strategic decision made back in 2002 to reduce the number of sports we offered at Canisius and to concentrate our resources in a smaller number of programs. As a result of that decision, Canisius has hired full-time coaches for nearly all its varsity sports.We’ve substantially increased athletic scholarship aid to enable coaches to find better student-athletes. We’ve invested significantly in upgrades of the Koessler Athletic Center and Demske Sports Complex, which this summer will see the installation of a new artificial turf.
There’s a new attitude at the Koessler Center. We don’t expect to win every game but our student-athletes and coaches do expect a first rate Division I athletic experience at Canisius, no matter what the sport. As we’ve seen this spring, when the emphasis is on quality, the wins will take care of themselves.