Cougar Club comes to the rescue

Nobody's pointing fingers. It's just not done in polite Charleston society.

But, the truth is that no money was budgeted for a scoreboard in the College of Charleston's new basketball arena, scheduled to open in November.

The $48 million facility on Meeting Street, branded the Carolina First Center, will be a state-of-the-art basketball venue slated to seat approximately 5,000 fans.

It is a marked improvement over the old John Kresse Arena just around the corner on George Street, where Cougar teams enjoyed a great home-court advantage playing before packed houses of just over 3,500 for big games.

The new building was a necessity, however, if the popular program was to move forward in the ever-escalating world of college athletics.

After talking about a new arena for decades, the school finally broke ground on the project last year. Third-year coach Bobby Cremins and his Cougars expect to tip off the new season in the new digs.

Only one problem. Well, maybe more than one problem. But the most glaring gaffe in the plans for this centerpiece facility is that plans did not include money for a scoreboard.

And if you haven't priced a scoreboard lately, get ready for some sticker shock.

A few issues

The College's new athletic director, Joe Hull, inherited this building under construction. He came from the University of Maryland where he'd been heavily involved in the construction of the Terps' Comcast Center.

Here, he found a few issues in the long-awaited arena under construction.

Apparently, money for a modern scoreboard wasn't included in the cost of construction because somebody said it would be covered by private donations. That, obviously, did not happen.

Modern scoreboards, which include bells and whistles like video screens and message boards, are not cheap. They can cost more than a half-million dollars.

That was the first surprise. The second was the building didn't have the latest in athletic rehabilitation equipment, such as an underwater treadmill and polar plunge pool, that shortens rehab time for injured athletes.

The next thing Hull learned about his new job is that money doesn't grow on trees at small schools like the College of Charleston.

Recognizing need

Thus he found himself standing before the Cougar Club earlier this week, requesting money to make the new arena a "first-class facility" that all College of Charleston fans and alumni can be proud of.

All told, Hull was asking the booster club for $370,000 for a scoreboard and $100,000 for the rehab equipment.

Naturally, there was some contention. Charleston is not known as a haven of change and this 238-year-old institution is part of that tradition.

The Cougar Club's mission has always been to raise funds for athletic scholarships at the school. To give money to the athletic department for anything else, they would have to change the bylaws.

There was some dissension in the ranks at the meeting Tuesday night. Some asked if the old scoreboard could be transferred from Kresse Arena to the new facility. The answer was no, the roof wouldn't support it. One man opposed the plan entirely, stating that he'd known eight presidents at the College of Charleston and "only two have not lied to me to my face."

In the end, however, the group's board of directors recognized the need and the group voted unanimously to change the bylaws and allow the money to flow to the new arena.

It appears, therefore, that the College of Charleston is learning to look to the future instead of living in the past. The hardest lesson for many of the old faithful, however, is how much the future is going to cost.

Reach Ken Burger at kburger@postandcourier.com.