PARK U

PARK U. FOOTBALL future or fantasy?Jason Lawrence

Citizen Staff

Park University, which has sat nestled in the hills overlooking downtown Parkville and the Missouri River for 137 years, has many rich traditions.

Football is not one of them.

Attempts have been made before to initiate a football program. Most recently, former Park President Dr. Don Breckon backed the idea 14 years ago, but he retired in 2000 and the idea fell by the wayside.

One undergraduate student Alex Thornton is trying to change all of that by creating a team from the outside, rather than by starting inside of the University.

Thornton, 19, is a lifelong Northland resident and attended Park Hill High School before choosing to attend Park University. He noticed a while back that Park has two of the three major sports baseball and basketball but lacks a football team.

Im a community guy, Im the fifth generation to live in my home, Thornton said. Im a big football, basketball, baseball, all sports guy and Im big on the whole college scene and everything it has to offer. After my first year at Park, I didnt understand what was going on.

Thornton sees starting a football program at the University as his way of giving back to the community and leaving a legacy. He also sees it as a way to reconnect Parkville and the University.

Imagine its September or October and Parks got a home football game and that games going to start at 11 a.m. or noon, now all of a sudden the City of Parkville plans around that, Thornton said. So now the City of Parkvilles looking for things like an economic boost and they want to get people connected between uptown and downtown. Whats a way to do that? Julian Field is right in the middle, so now you have something that ties that in. Now they plan around it, have a Parkville Days after the game. Everyones already down there, now you just walk down to downtown. Youve already got people there.

Parkville Assistant City Administrator Sean Ackerson also sees a football team as something that could benefit the City of Parkville.

Certainly for larger universities, the sports programs have a definite benefit on the economy, Ackerson said. It can be increased traffic to your restaurants and coffee shops. It can be overnight stays in your hotels and motels. It can be selling more gas at the local gas stations. Wed certainly hope to see those benefits. Itd just be a positive influence and a good way to build some community spirit and have an event the community would come together around. If something like that does materialize, we would certainly hope to see some economic benefits.

There are other benefits too, such as higher enrollment, more alumni support and community involvement.

Three things a football team does, it brings alumni support they now have something to come to, Thornton said. It brings a male population. Also when you look at it, it brings a female population. You get more males, youre going to get more females its natural. It also brings community support. You have two high schools in Park Hill and Park Hill South that are very diehard football schools, athletic schools, very smart schools and Park is right in the middle of both of them. I believe that there is a way to tap into all of that and one way is a football team.

Ackerson said Parkville is an active sports community and a University football team could help bring the community together.

I think its an interesting proposal, Ackerson said. One of the things that certainly can bring a community together is college level sports and high school level sports. You have a very active sports community in the area A college football team could certainly add some interest and could certainly be a reason to bring the community together for team events. I was excited to hear they were talking about it and would be interested in more details.

While Thornton knows a football program will not take form overnight, his idea practically did. After hearing from about 10 fellow students and then a Park official, he decided to pursue the idea and spoke with Park University Athletic Director Claude English Nov. 19 and got to the point he is currently at by Dec. 14 when the University offices closed for winter break.

The first 10 (peoples comments) went in one ear and out the other, Thornton said. It was about that 11th person that came up to me and that person was an executive down at Park. The Park executive was very influential to me on my pursuit and I said, OK, maybe I should actually listen.

Thornton said he has already secured over a million dollars in funding (but declined to divulge the source or nature of the funding), but did acknowledge that this project would be a multi-million dollar endeavor. He also said he would like to see groundbreaking done on the project in two or three years and that in five to six years, Park may have a football team.

There are also other things to consider, such as the safety of 9 Highway as thousands of cars drive on it weekly and upgraded facilities at Park University. The school already has a soccer field, so adding to the locker rooms and training facilities would be necessary, Thornton said.

Theres so much more that goes into it between facilities, the student to faculty ratio thats going to have to change, cafeterias, traffic on 9 Highway to parking, Thornton said. A whole new infrastructure a whole new revolutionizing part of a community and University together. That really drove me, being a community guy.

English said that the University is in a fact-finding state right now and is always looking at what sports offerings would benefit the school.

Were always looking at other possibilities for sports offerings and the feasibility of having football and how it would impact the University as to enrollment and financially, but we are looking at that, English said. Im doing some fact finding right now. Were looking at how it would benefit us from a standpoint of our sports offerings now as far as facilities are concerned because football is a different type of sports offering. The number of students youre talking about, the size of different facilities, like weight rooms and locker rooms and things like that, so theres a lot of other issues that come into play when you talk about adding a sport like football.

Thornton has also studied other Universities, from Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville to the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg and even the University of Missouri-Columbia, to get ideas and find things that can be implemented at Park. He based a lot of his ideas on Maryville and Northwest, citing similarities between the Maryville and Parkville communities.

While the proposal is still in its infancy, Thornton does have petitions circling around to different groups students, faculty and staff and alumni and has also started a Facebook page (Park University Football) and a Twitter account (@ParkUFootball).

It took off like wildfire, Thornton said. I separated everything, so that I knew. Obviously, Ive got huge student support, but the alumni theres not a lot because theres nothing drawing them back, so Ive got to work on that part. Faculty, theyre going to be I need this before we need that. So there are numerous routes I took there to figure all of that out for the long run.

For the time being, Thornton is still gathering information and talking to as many people as he can to hear what they think about his idea, but if all goes according to the plan he has in his head, it could pay dividends down the road.

This whole football venture, it could really pay big dividends for a city, a community, a University and for generations to come if it sets up correctly, Thornton said.

However, there could be a roadblock in the way Park Universitys five-year plan, Parks Promise. Park President Dr. Michael Droge said that the plan did not include a football team nor was one discussed and that talk of a football team came as a surprise to him.

After more than a year of institution-wide planning, the University launched a new five-year strategic plan this past fall and were now also updating our master plan accordingly to match our strategic plan and neither of those plans contemplate a football team, Droge said. The strategic plan already commits the University to many other priorities in funding, so a football team is not in the picture.