At last month's Board of Visitors meeting, it was decided that new scoreboards will be put into place at all Longwood University Athletics facilities including Willett Hall, Charles Buddy Bolding Stadium, the softball field and the Athletics Complex. A total of six scoreboards would be replaced. The reason for the replacement, according to Longwood Athletics Director Troy Austin, is that the scoreboards are approaching 20 years of age.
"They don't have very much time left on them," he said. "They came in with the Pepsi contract that came about in the early 1990s. They only have a couple of years left on them."
Austin said when he came to Longwood in 2006 the scoreboards were a problem that he noticed right away. Over the years, they have begun to deteriorate even more, the one at Bolding Stadium being worse than others. "We've had situations where we worry whether or not it can hold up for a game. We've never had an in-game problem with any of them, but if we don't rectify the situation within the next couple of years, we will."
"We've also had some problems when [the basketball] teams are practicing in Willett and the scoreboards have malfunctioned in some sort of way. And that's also been a concern for us, if a scoreboard doesn't work or stops working during a game."
According to Austin, the new scoreboards will hopefully be in place by the start of the 2012 spring semester. They will have LEDs rather than light bulbs, which are used by the current scoreboards. They will also feature more advertising space, which will lead to increased revenue for the athletics department. Not only are they going to require less man power than the current ones, they will also use less energy.
The new boards will also, according to Austin, increase the profile of Longwood on the recruiting front. "We want to compete with every school in the country and make ourselves more well-known," he said, "There is no doubt that this will help us there."
"Personally, I am very excited for what this does for our department at the University. This project is going to further modernize our facilities and allow for increased revenues. It is a huge step forward for us."
The Board of Visitors approved providing up to $445,000 for the project. The money would come from the Longwood's General Auxiliary Reserve Fund. The Reserve Fund is a discretionary funds program that the university has, which is basically a "rainy day" supply of money used for emergencies, unforeseen circumstances, or projects such as this.
