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Mike Lynch: BU athletics poised to become more prominent in Boston sports scene
By Brian Fitzgerald
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Mike Lynch. Photo by Vernon Doucette. |
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The BU athletics department’s momentum is just beginning to build with the opening of Agganis Arena, says Mike Lynch, assistant vice president and athletics director. He sees the facility as a launching point of his three-year plan to take sports at BU to an unprecedented level of success.
Aside from providing a new home for men’s hockey, he says, the arena will enable the men’s and women’s basketball teams to “become more prominent on the Boston sports landscape,” and possibly join a more competitive conference in the future.
His plan also involves more scholarships for varsity athletes, boosting sports marketing, public relations, and brand development efforts, extending the athletic department’s outreach into the community — especially with youth groups — and seeking additional funding for the program that gives academic support to student-athletes.
Lynch, who spearheaded fundraising efforts for the John Hancock Student Village for four years before assuming the athletics director post last July, says that improving the standing of the basketball programs is a top priority because of the potential to draw fans and media coverage.
“We’re spending a lot of time and effort trying to promote and expand the fan base for our basketball program, and the way to do that is to upgrade the level of our competition and play a national schedule,” he says. “If this means playing in a different conference, we certainly want to be in a position to be ready to do that.”
Lynch points to the changing face of conference affiliations — including the membership of the Big East, the Atlantic Coast Conference, and Conference USA. “When those top conferences get a feel for where the future lies, we’ll start to understand exactly what that means for the smaller conferences such as ours, America East,” he says. “Our ideal situation would be to join a conference like the Atlantic 10 — however, that’s not the only possibility we’re looking at.”
The present home of the men’s and women’s basketball teams is the Case Gymnasium, but each will play two games in Agganis Arena this year: against Vermont on Saturday, February 12, and against Northeastern on Sunday, February 20. And the demand for tickets is likely to grow next year, when the men’s team will play colleges from major conferences at home: Michigan (Big Ten) and Rhode Island (Atlantic 10), two teams that the Terriers have defeated on the road this season.
Lynch says that BU lacrosse and soccer — sports with a large following at the high school level — also have the potential to draw students and fans from all over greater Boston, as does women’s ice hockey, which is being elevated to varsity status. “In addition, our track and field and tennis programs have a brand-new facility,” he says, “and the swim teams will have new aquatic facilities in the Fitness and Recreation Center.”
BU’s athletics program has been successful for years, “but it hasn’t necessarily been looked upon as a major unit within the University,” according to Lynch. “I think it’s been underutilized from a public relations perspective, and it’s been underappreciated. Now that we have these new facilities, we have a real opportunity to make athletics one of the units at BU that will be a central piece of the undergraduate experience, and an even bigger source of pride.”
14
January 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations