When toiling beneath the major college basketball conference fold it’s easy to daydream about the possibilities that the future of your program can one day achieve. With the right mix of coaching, recruiting, and a fanbase that opens its wallets and hearts, a program can rise from middling to the class of college basketball. It takes time. It takes a lot of patience. Most importantly, it takes a whole lot of luck.
It also takes a market. It takes a city looking for its own identity. It takes a group of deep pocketed and successful alumni.
Check.
When Creighton began its ascension to perennial mid-major winner, the city of Omaha slowly began to show support. When the Qwest Center opened and the Korver era waned, the citizens and alumni alike took notice as the Jays made a 16,000+ arena feel intimate in the dregs of the Missouri Valley Conference.
Anomaly? A one-off? A stage where we could cringe and cheer at the likes of a talent similar to P’Allen Stinnett?
Check.
The fanbase grew. The longtime coach, who raised the profile of the university, departed to greener – literally – pastures. A man and his son took over the program overnight and the small Jesuit school went from occasional Cinderella hopeful to one of the most intriguing belles of the proverbial ball.
An invitation to the overhauled Catholic 7, now containing 10 schools with mirrored success. The BIG EAST. The lights, the sleepless delusions, the stage in Manhattan at Madison Square.
Check.
“We’ve made it, pa,” one surly and large kid says to his father, “this ain’t St. Louis no more.”
With a spotlight on the shiny new conference, the Jays routinely exit flyover country to travel to densely populated cities with high powered fanbases, with a focus on hoops, with a newfound life breathing through the athletic programs. From volleyball to men’s soccer to the hardwood hoops to hosting the conference’s baseball tournament, Creighton University has attained something that a kid from Omaha daydreamed about so many years ago.
With this success comes a few changes, mostly for vanity, but with the primary objective to make it a comforting and ultimately attractive place for athletes to train, rest, and fall in love with.
The website in which you’re reading this piece of text hosts a golf outing fundraiser every summer to give back to the university so they can help build these palaces to house the aformentioned athletes. Many others have opened their wallets to give back to the place they’ve grown so fond of.
Below this text outlines the upgrades to the palaces – scroll down to look at the photos because I’m sure you’ve already grown tired of my writing – with a brief outline of what it is that you’re looking at.
Enjoy.
