I'd just like to throw my $.02 into the fray. What follows are some comments made by Wayne ***** in his recent posting and my uncensored replies. 1) Additional and/or relocated concessions and rest rooms are needed. SP: I couldn't agree with you more. 2) Additional locker rooms and office space are more important than the additional seating. SP: You are starting to sound like an administrator. Maybe your right, but you didn't back this claim with any hard statistics. Why do they need more office space? Why more locker rooms? I thought they just built new locker rooms. It is true that the players are getting bigger!! 3) OK, OK, everyone claims they can't get into see the hockey games. The additional seating should let everyone get in and bring the beleaguered UM Athletic Dept. a needed revenue boost. *I don't believe it.* Yea, 80+ games have been played to a full-house (I forget the actual wording of the press babble), but the truth is that NO ONE has been turned away who is willing to wait until game time to get in. Only a handful of games last season had 4400+. Though the methods of counting may have changed now and then, basically this is the number of tickets sold, not people attending. There is something special about a contest in front of a full-house. The challenge for the Athletic Dept. is to fill that new seating on an ongoing basis. Once tickets become easy to get, Maine attendance could DROP to levels most other Eastern schools see. SP: Oh contrair. I for one know of a great deal of people (student friends and family) who feel that getting a ticket is too much of a time sink. As a graduate student, I've been subject to 3+ hour hockey lines, occasionally being turned away because they are sold out. In recent semesters, I had to be in class during "ticket give away times", which made getting a ticket a moral issue. My parents love to attend Maine hockey games (121 miles one way), but I usually have to buy three balcony tickets, thus giving up my *already paid for* (sports pass) ticket, just so I can sit with them. Do you really think that fans attend the games because tickets are so hard to get? You mean if they are easy to get I'll lose interest?? 4) The following comments don't pertain much to College_Hockey, but are important to the expansion project and to me and the rest of the local community: It is proposed that Men's and Women's Basketball be played at the Alfond Arena (they now play 15 miles from campus, in Bangor). It is hoped that student interest in basketball can be rekindled with this move (fans outnumber the players and officials at Men's Basketball games now, but not by much). Well, the original Alfond Arena was proposed as a multi-purpose arena but has been used exclusively for ice skating from early September thru mid April each year. It is most often in use from 5am through 1am during this period. Adding basketball games and practice times (as well as time to put down and take up the basketball floor) will further overload the facility. In the name of big-time sports, the community, non-revenue and recreational sports use of the Alfond will decline dramatically. Area youth hockey, for which I have special fondness, owes its origins and continuing health to (access to) the Alfond Arena. We need to play basketball on our ice surface about as much as we need to play football under a dome (a wish-list item of the UM Athletic Dept. the past couple of years). SP: Yeah, you tell em. I stand with you on these last issues, although it would be nice to bring the basketball games back onto campus (where they belong). Okay, anyone else? Logout, Steve Philbrick "Treat a child as though (s)he already is University of Maine the person (s)he's capable of becoming." [log in to unmask] HAIM GINOTT