Portland State has hosted some incredible athletes recently. Women’s golf phenom Britney Yada, for instance, led the Vikings to two conference championships before her junior year, ranked in the Big Sky All-Conference first team and took home a medal from last year’s conference championship. Men’s tennis player Chris Rice was the first Viking in Portland State history to get selected to the first team in the Big Sky Conference. And this year, the university has hosted two of the best sprinters in its history, both of whom smashed conference records: Geronne Black and Karene King.
Bring our athletes home!
Portland State has hosted some incredible athletes recently. Women’s golf phenom Britney Yada, for instance, led the Vikings to two conference championships before her junior year, ranked in the Big Sky All-Conference first team and took home a medal from last year’s conference championship. Men’s tennis player Chris Rice was the first Viking in Portland State history to get selected to the first team in the Big Sky Conference. And this year, the university has hosted two of the best sprinters in its history, both of whom smashed conference records: Geronne Black and Karene King.
There have been some incredible memories from this—one of the best competitive stretches in the university’s history. But unfortunately, you are unlikely to have many of those memories. In fact, as the sports editor of the paper that covers these teams, even I don’t have most of those memories. Very few Portland State students will get to enjoy these feats in person, because none of the teams those great athletes played for ever got a chance to compete in the city of Portland.
Spring quarter is especially egregious. Out of the thirteen sports teams PSU athletics supports, five of which compete this season, only one hosts home games in the city of Portland. Some teams host home games elsewhere. The tennis teams play at a tennis club in Vancouver, Wash. Some, like the golf and track and field teams, just don’t have any home meets at all.
Embarassingly, the only time Viking tennis teams have played in the city of Portland is when they went to face cross-town rivals University of Portland at their home court. Good luck to you if you want to see your tennis team actually play, since their schedule on goviks.com lists their home games as happening in “Portland, Ore.” You’d have to dig into ther PR archives to find the actual location of the games (it’s Club Green Meadows, FYI). How is that encouraging a culture of athletics?
Inter-conference rivals Weber State have found venues for 12 of their 14 teams in Ogden, Utah. Does Portland really have fewer available sporting venues than Ogden? It isn’t as though athletics is doing a bad job of getting our athletes out there. The football team has a permanent home in what is arguably the city’s second nicest stadium, Jeld-Wen, and really go all out, making over the stands in Vikings and Horde regalia and airing finely produced video packages. Both the football and basketball teams will benefit from a new cable television deal that will get our teams out to a wider audience with better broadcast quality than they’ve ever had before.
But is it fair that a football team that hasn’t made the playoffs in half a decade gets a new stadium and television deal, while the only Portland venue provided for the fastest 100 meter sprinter in Big Sky history is the track at Lincoln High School? If you want to see Viking athletics this quarter, I hope you like softball (I do), because while other Portland State students are competing in the spring, none of them are competing here.
