by Michael in Raleigh » Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:42 am
Hooray for the website! Man that took a while!
I took a quick browse through the "Championships" tab. I'm not sure how much is news or not, but these are some notes that stood out to me:
- The men's and women's tennis tournament will be held at Flushing Meadows, site of the US Open. Is there a better site within Big East territory than that? Is there a better one in the United States? Great move by Ackerman & company. Coaches and athletes should be pumped about the opportunity to play in that venue!
- The women's basketball tournament will be held at DePaul March 8-11.
- Baseball still has to choose a tournament site. Omaha would make a lot of sense for obvious reasons. If that isn't the chosen site, though, there are still plenty of classy minor league baseball parks all over the place. I'm sure they'll find somewhere suitable in due time.
- The men's golf tournament will be held at Callawassie Island Golf Course in Okatie, SC, while the women's golf tournament will be held at the LPGA International golf course in Daytona Beach. I found this interesting. I can see the pros and cons of having them in these locations. Travel costs, at least to Daytona Beach, are probably the same or less than they would be for the teams that would otherwise have to fly to, say, Milwaukee, anyway. Plane tickets to Orlando, which is roughly 75 minutes from Daytona Beach, are among the cheapest in the country. The LPGA course is probably an exciting opportunity for the women's team. As for the South Carolina site, I'm not big on golf, but I hear pretty often from my wife's golf-obsessed family about how great the courses are on the SC coast. On the other hand, there are a lot of great courses in the Northeast and Midwest, too. I would have expected a course outside New York or Chicago to be the sites for the Big East golf championships. I'd be interested in hearing from the conference office how they chose those sites and what the reactions have been by the league's teams.
- UConn is hosting the women's field hockey tournament.