For any athlete there is nothing quite like a serious injury that can so thoroughly derail a promising season. One minute you may be in prime form, have worked at your craft throughout the entirety of an offseason, and in the blink of an eye you watch as all your hard work crumbles before you in a heap of shattered hopes. Now, of course, should an athlete sustain an injury while off-season and not playing, the mental toll could be a little more, but they’d always have the option to contact the likes of an Arkansas Personal Injury Attorney or similar legal services available. While the initial physical pain is temporary, the mental toll a serious injury takes is far more challenging for any athlete to cope with. This is where Bo Schuh, now a sophomore forward for the men’s basketball team, found himself in the middle of last season.
The date was January 2nd. It was Saturday in Terra Haute, Indiana, and the Pioneers were playing Rose-Hulman in a conference matchup. A game sophomore forward, Bo Schuh, would not soon forget. To have him put it, “I remember that game way too vividly.”
As is typical for the start of a New Year, people everywhere had their sights set on personal goals, fresh starts, and promising futures. It was no different for Bo Schuh; a talented freshman at the time, known for his high-flying finishes at the rim and his uncapped potential. Going into that game Bo had seen his playing time progress on a steady incline. He had played 30 minutes against Ohio Wesleyan two games prior, and against Thomas More (the game immediately before Rose-Hulman) he had played 36 minutes. He was averaging just over 13 points per game.
“I was really confident.” Schuh replied when asked how he felt going into the Rose-Hulman game. “It was the best basketball I had ever played.”
He had no idea the entire complexion of his season and his personal life were going to change in the matter of a nano-second.
Bo had scored 11 points in just 12 minutes of play. With the clock showing around eight minutes to go in the first half, catastrophe struck for the freshman. He faked a handoff on the left wing and dribbled down the baseline.
“I was driving in for a layup, and when I came down I landed pretty weird.” Schuh stated. “I landed on my left leg and it just buckled.” He sunk the layup to tie his season average of 13 points.
Initially Bo didn’t know the extent of the injury. “I walked off by myself, so I was like, ‘I guess I’m OK.’ I got taped up to go back in, but it didn’t work out.” Coach Lane decided against putting Bo back in for the remainder of the game as a precaution.
As his knee pain persisted, Bo went to a specialist a couple of days after his injury. His dad, trainer Libby Cole, and Coach Lane accompanied him. “I went and saw a doctor two days later, and that’s when they told me I had torn my ACL.”
As the doctor began talking about rehab, a dejected Schuh tuned it out. “I just stared at the floor for like fifteen minutes. I didn’t want to hear it.”
Schuh stated that he remembers finding out about his injury as one of the lowest points of his life. “It was just the feeling of knowing the next ten months of my life were going to be different and I probably wouldn’t be able to play basketball the same way again.” After receiving the news, Schuh rode back to campus with his dad. “After [my dad] parked the car in the Beck Center parking lot I just started breaking down crying.”
Coach Lane texted the team in a group message to let them know they would have a team dinner at Malone’s that night. It was there that Bo announced to the team that he would not be returning to the court for the rest of the season. “After about 30 minutes into dinner I went into the bathroom and cried for another fifteen minutes. I was just so upset.”
Unbeknownst to Bo, while he was in the restroom his teammates told the waiter at the restaurant it was Bo’s birthday. When he came back to the table, everyone began singing happy birthday. “My birthday is in July.” Bo stated, laughing. “It was the only thing that cheered me up that day.”
After that night, Bo went every day to the Beck Center training room for rehab, and once every week to the Lexington Clinic for physical therapy. He carries the lessons he learned in rehab with him today in order to improve his game. “I still stretch about three times a day,” he says. Physical therapy can help with so many ailments, and when practiced correctly will support recovery greatly, alameda physical therapy clinic may be the right one for those searching in California, but there will be ones closer to them if they do not reside in that area.
Bo found silent motivation in his will to come back and play with his team again. “I never had a low point during rehab.” All in all, rehab lasted nine months. Rehab centers like Pacific Ridge, can do amazing things for people since they really can change people’s lives.
This season Bo is having to get acclimated to his new role on the team. As a prolific scorer his freshman year, he is adjusting to being a defensive and rebounding specialist. “It was frustrating at first because I was sitting on the bench a lot and only getting limited minutes. Then I just sort of realized that I needed to stop caring so much about my stats because if I play my role it can help us win.”
Senior Derek Jeffries echoed the sentiments of the rest of the team in saying how happy the guys are to have Bo back on the court. “With him coming back that adds depth to our forward positions.” Jeffries is no stranger to season ending injuries, having missed his entire freshman season. “Having come back from a season ending injury myself I know how hard it is to stay positive. He worked really hard in the offseason in his rehab,” Jeffries stated, “Great things will continue to come for him.”
Out of the many lessons this injury has taught him, one sticks with Bo. “Don’t take anything for granted. Every athlete’s career eventually ends, even if you don’t get injured.” A lesson all athletes can take meaning from. “Enjoy it while you can.” Bo stated, “And stretch a lot.”
Bo knows motivation
Campus Conversation: Dr. Kerri Hauman
Brandon Trapp ’19 sat down with Dr. Kerri Hauman to discuss how digital technology is being integrated into the learning experience across campus and her ideas and aspirations for the future.
Women’s Lacrosse team, standing at third, prepares for more success
If one observes Transy’s women’s lacrosse team practicing, it should not come as a surprise that they are coming off a very successful 2016 season, with a strong 13-4 record, as well as going 7-1 in conference play. Entering 2017, the team continues to look very poised, standing at third in the ORLC pre-season rankings and hoping to finish there or even higher.
“We will look to still be a top contender in the conference. Improving as the season goes on and have our play reflect that we are gelling and our players are feeling more comfortable and confident in their roles on the field,” said Coach Lauren Bickford.
Two significant losses that the team will have to work through are Rachel Harrison, a senior last year who won the ORLC Player of the Year, as well as goalkeeper Lydia Shaugnessy, who also graduated. While a good deal of experience is returning, there are also several new faces, including assistant coach Katie Vautier. For the team to repeat the success they enjoyed in 2016, everyone will need to play their respective part, from newcomers to veterans.
Coach Bickford elaborated, “We’re returning some of our top stat leaders including our Newcomer of the Year (Emma Oliver) and 3 all-conference selections (Julie Ward, Kate Winkelmeyer, Katherine Stachowski) from the 2016 season, who bring strong leadership and passion for the game. However, we’re expecting contributions from everyone on our roster. We have a lot of new faces, and returners who are really stepping up. We’re excited to see what they will bring this season.”
The Pioneers await an exciting, challenging schedule this season, perhaps more markedly than in the past. Hopefully this tactic will be beneficial later in the season when the ladies take on conference rivals such as Mount Saint Joseph.
“We’re hungry to get out there and play. We’ve added new non-conference opponents who will bring an added challenge to our season and help us improve for conference play,” said Bickford.
The coach recalled her excitement in one of last year’s hard-fought wins.
“Our biggest rival would have to be Mount Saint Joseph. It’s always an exciting, nail-biting game with them. Last year we beat them in sudden victory OT,” added Bickford.
All things considered, it looks like the women’s lacrosse team is absolutely destined to have a solid campaign this spring. Check out a few games if you have the chance; these Pioneers are unlikely to disappoint!
Life at Transylvania: PPE major exemplifies interdisciplinary learning, liberal arts
What does it mean to be a Transylvania Pioneer? This is a question that The Rambler is going to explore and attempt to answer through looking at specific and unique aspects of Transylvania life and explain what they are and what they mean to the campus. This will not only explain the campus culture for audiences outside of Transy, but also capture campus life in this specific moment in Transy history. #thisistransy
Since its addition to Transylvania curriculum, the major Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, also known as PPE, has been of increased interest for students. There are a variety of reasons students choose particular majors, whether it be to fulfill a passion or to get a job upon graduation, or both.
For senior PPE and Spanish double major Julia Johnson, it was the latter.
“I’ve always been interested in Political Science, and I knew that that was a major. I’ve also always been interested in Law School. I knew that a lot of people going to Law School would also have a Political Science background. When I heard about this new major… I just thought that sense it’s so new it would separate me or make me stand out a little more when it came time to apply to Law School.”
Johnson, who has recently completed the Law School application process, says she is confident in the skills developed through the PPE major in gaining her acceptance into her desired programs.
Besides critical writing and critical reading, Johnson emphasizes interdisciplinary connections.
“Being able to connect those three areas and allow each of them to influence how you see the other is another skill I’ve gained,” says Johnson.
With a goal of practicing Civil or Immigration Law, Johnson felt she benefited from the internship requirement that accompanies the major. Her work with Legal Aid of the Bluegrass influenced her desire to become an Immigration attorney.
“That’s what solidified me wanting to do Immigration Law,” says Johnson.
Professor of Philosophy and PPE program director Dr. Peter Fosl expressed his satisfaction with the major via phone interview, demonstrating how the internship requirement associated with the major makes the major unique.
“They try to apply theory to practice,” says Fosl. Students have occupied a variety of venues to carry out their internships. According to Fosl, these include, but are not limited to, the Kentucky Supreme Court, pro-life groups, law firms, and immigration groups.
The program’s success is, in part, a result of dedication. Since 1998, Fosl has advocated for the major being available to Transy students. Fosl has been so adamant about the major because of its close relation to the liberal arts.
“The most appealing thing is it enacts the ideals of the liberal arts and interdisciplinary studies to prepare students to engage in matters of law, politics, and society generally,” states Fosl.
Fosl attributes Transy’s acceptance of the program to former Vice President and Dean of the college Dr. William Pollard, who stepped down from his position in 2012, the same year the PPE major became a fixture in Transylvania’s curriculum.
Another unique characteristic of the PPE major is how it, “approach[es] PPE topics, not simply as through the disciplines of Philosophy, Political Science and Economics, but we include courses that appear in other majors that have strong PPE content,” says Fosl.
These classes include those within Sociology, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Fine Arts classes, according to Fosl.
“There is a strong value in interdisciplinary learning,” says Fosl. “When we decide what course will count to the major, we consider not what discipline they are in, but the content of them.”
While acknowledging their usefulness in providing diverse perspectives, Fosl addresses the stumbling block of disciplines in stating, “Disciplines are a marvelous and wonderful thing… but I think there may be a kind of understanding, insight, a kind of cognition that comes with interdisciplinarity. There are different ways disciplines complement and enrich one another.”
“[PPE] is a return to a more comprehensive way of thinking,” says Fosl, emphasizing that interdisciplinary learning and thinking is nothing new. Fosl draws on examples, such as Karl Marx and Adam Smith, to recognize that they were also political and philosophical theorist.
The program has peaked the interest of many students, like Johnson, who desire an interdisciplinary learning experience that will provide them with skills for their future. It is already gaining the attention of incoming Pioneers.
As Fosl states, “The liberal arts is divided into two parts: verbal and rhetorical and quantitative and analytical. I think [PPE] brings both of those together in very powerful ways.”
This week in sports 2/1
This past week, the Women’s Basketball team closed out January with a win against Anderson and the third place spot in the HCAC standings. Throughout January, the team went 7-1, falling only to top ranked Rose-Hulman. With only 6 more games left in the season, the team will face second place Bluffton before the beginning of the HCAC Championships.
The Men’s team finished the month on a low note after suffering their only loss for the month against Anderson, trailing at the end of the game by only 3 points. The team now ranks fourth overall with a HCAC record of 8-4. Senior guard, Alex Jones, was named HCAC player of the week for the week of the 22nd. This comes after a game against first place (tied) Mt. St. Joseph where he scored 29 points, and earned six assists, seven rebounds, and two steals. He followed up this performance with a 25 point performance as well as 12 assists, two rebounds and two steals.
The Men’s and Women’s indoor Track and Field teams set multiple records in an invitational at Rose-Hulman. Freshmen Rian Boelter set a new Transylvania women’s record in the high jump, jumping 1.4 meters. Senior Taylor Sanders recorded a new record of 13.68 meters in the women’s weight throw. Sophomore Malik Jackson set a new record of 13.25 meters in the men’s triple jump. Junior Bradley Easterling’s new school record came in the men’s weight throw after throwing for 11.84 meters. The women’s team placed fifth overall and the men placed seventh.
The Men’s Tennis team is expected to place sixth in their upcoming season according to a coaches’ poll. The team will compete for the first time under coach Kevin Calhoun who, earlier this year led the women’s team to the HCAC tournament. Their season will start with an away match against Sewanee and LaGrange on Feb. 25.
Does Transy need a stronger math and science curriculum?
As the time to select fall classes draws closer, students will once again look at their degree audits and try to figure out how to fulfill all of their degree requirements, including their General Education requirements (GE’s). Transy has a broad GE curriculum, thanks to the pursuit of a liberal arts education, but some argue that the way Transy has built this broad system does not do justice to certain fields of study. This column will examine whether Transy GE’s should include a stronger math and science section.
As the GE requirements for math and science currently stand, a student is only required to take one math course and one science course during their entire career at Transy. While students have an opportunity to use math and science classes as Area IV requirements, it’s only rarely that students outside the math and science fields choose to use math and science courses to actually fulfill their Area IV requirements. It’s also true that many students come to Transy with AP math and science classes, and this lets them avoid ever stepping foot in BSC. Such a minimal math and science requirement does not seem to conform with the ideal of a liberal arts education. Taking a single class in the fields does not allow students to gain an appreciation for the skills of that discipline, and one class is not a nearly comprehensive enough representation of the disciplines that we expect from the liberal arts.
However, this argument— that one class does not adequately represent an entire discipline or expose students to enough skills within a field— can be made for every section of the GE requirements. Taking a single Humanities, Fine Arts, or Social Science class does not make you an expert within one of those disciplines any more than taking a single math or science class does. Many students just happen to take more of these classes because they use them to fulfill their Areas IV and V. Those same opportunities exist in the math and science fields; students just choose not to take them because of the skill base that is required. That’s not something that Transy can control. Additionally, changing the number of math or science courses required would probably force a similar expansion in the other GE requirements, and students simply do not have room for that many classes.
The larger issue that’s at stake is whether our current GE system is viable. This debate over math and science GE’s represents a microcosm of the larger issues regarding the GE system and the potential changes people want to make. Though this column has merely explored the issue, rather than advocating for one side, students need to consider how they feel about the current GE system—would you keep or change our current system?
This discussion illuminates the broader point that the GE system is designed to foster the spirit of liberal arts education, yet may be failing students on that point. The good news is that there is currently a review of the GE system happening to address any issues with the current curriculum. So, if you get asked your opinions on the GE system, please give your honest opinion. Maybe you think the current system perfectly exposes you to various disciplines, or maybe you think the GE’s do not really encapsulate the liberal arts. You might not even be sure what the goals of the GE system are currently. Regardless of your opinion, be honest and constructive when considering how Transy can better improve our current system of GE’s so that we can produce effective change for the entire system, not just one segment, like math and science.
Transy community creates flowers to honor slaves sold at Cheapside
On Wednesday night, members of the Transy community gathered together in Third Street Stuff and Coffee to honor slaves sold at Cheapside Park. Although perhaps not known to many, Cheapside was a large marketplace where various commodities were traded and sold, which included many enslaved people.
The event, hosted by the Transy class “Community Engagement through the Arts,” was titled “Flowers of Remembrance.” The attendees cut out flowers from plastic bottles, colored the petals using markers, and smoothed the plastic using the flames of candles.
Professors Kremena Todorova and Kurt Gohde have taught the class for the past ten years together. They have been working with three local elementary schools for the past few years so were looking for a project that children could easily participate in. Two of the schools are involved with a recycling program, which is where the idea to use plastic bottles came from.
The flowers are not only to honor those enslaved and sold, but to also shed light on history that many may not know.
As Todorova explains, the event was “also a final, tangible way to mark their lives because we feel that it’s a part of our history that a lot of people are not aware of. So we wanted to bring it to light and honor them.”
Those in attendance included Transy students and faculty as well as alumnus and members of the Lexington community. The students were all drawn to the event for various reasons.
For some attendees, the event was just something creative and fun.
As first-year Bailey DeLong describes, “I’m mostly just here because I enjoy it a lot.”
First-year Kristen Glass wanted to attend because of her past experience with Todorova and Gohde.
“I really like the Unlearn Fear and Hate events and I wanted to support Kurt and Kremena. They always do really fun things,” said Glass. She also pointed out that making the flowers was a nice way to destress amidst studying for a Calculus exam.
While some students were there to support Todorova and Godhe, others were there to support friends.
“I came to this event because a bunch of my friends were in the class that put it on,” said sophomore Kat Farr.
Students from the actual class took part in the event as well. First-year Marissa Price is currently taking the course and noted the importance of such an event.
“I think it’s important to get the community together and just get other people involved with the project so people become more aware of the history of Lexington,” said Price. “I think there’s an element to history where we forget that it happened right where we live and on the ground we walk on, so it’s interesting to take something that happened in the past and make people who live here now more aware of it. Plus making art together to form a memorial is a great way to unify the community.”
The flowers are planned to be strung together in some fashion as a larger art piece. The piece will be revealed in an installation ceremony at the Lyric Theatre sometime in April. According to Todorova, the installation ceremony will probably be accompanied by performance of poetry and music surrounding the themes of Cheapside, history, and black empowerment.
Todorova explained the importance of working with the Lyric Theater on this project.
“We’re excited to work with them because they are the major African-American cultural center in town,” said Todorova.
Sophomore Jocelyn Lucero revives Pre-Law Fraternity
One thing Transy is known for is its student’s nearly 100% acceptance rate into law school; when it comes to educating future lawyers, Transy is doing an incredible job. However, sophomore and pre-law student Jocelyn Lucero found a gap in the program: Transy lacks a club for pre-law students.
“At the beginning of first semester whenever we had the fair outside for all of the freshmen, I was just looking around and the pre-health booth was right next to us and I was like ‘Oh, I wonder if there is a pre-law booth’ because that’s what I was interested in doing. So I looked around and I walked around and I couldn’t find one.” said Lucero, who plans on going into Immigration or Human Rights law.
After looking around, Lucero asked some peers and also went to Michelle Thompson, the Acting Assistant Director of Campus and Community Engagement, to ask about starting up a pre-law club.
Thompson, who is in charge of helping students start clubs on campus, told Lucero that if she wanted to start a club she would have to wait six months after filling out the initial forms.
“I kind of just forgot about it,” Lucero said. “But then over break I stumbled upon this website which isn’t really just a club, it’s actually like an honorary and its national, and I saw that Transy was listed as one of its chapters. So I was like ‘Oh, I guess there is one!’ And I emailed her [Michelle Thompson] about that and she said ‘no they haven’t been active for two years.’ ”
The club, Phi Alpha Delta, a national law fraternity, turned out to have been on Transy’s campus once. Political science professor Dr. Don Dugi told Lucero that it had been a long time since the club was on campus, “But people graduate and forget about things and those are student led organizations so as soon as students graduate it just falls through,” Lucero said Dugi told her.
Dugi, who is the advisor of SGA, will also be the advisor for the fraternity, but the majority of the work to get the club up and running again falls on Lucero, who has had to fill out paperwork with the national level, but also with Transy, along with creating a constitution and mission statement.
In order for the club to be recognized at Transy again, it will need 20 members, which Lucero isn’t having too hard of a time recruiting.
“So far I have 12 students, and that was just from the TNotes post,” Lucero said.
Members of the fraternity will have to pay an initial fee of $100.00 to join, but it is money that can potentially be saved in other places.
“We get discounts for prep stuff for the LSAT, which prep books are really expensive, and I was also reading that we would get some fees waived for the LSAT and law school applications,” Lucero said. In addition to these discounts directly applying to pre-law students, Lucero said there are other helpful discounts for stores like Brooks Brothers, car rentals and also insurance that members can receive.
Lucero hopes that the group will more than anything be a place for students thinking about or studying to one day go to law school to have support through the process of taking the LSAT and also applying to law schools.
“I know I have a lot of questions,” Lucero said. “So I hope this will be a great way for students to get together and kind of maybe answer each others questions and bounce ideas off each other, just like a support group for us, because that’s going to be very stressful [applying to law school]. And then also, if it keeps going, seniors can give juniors and sophomores advice, like ‘Oh when I took it [the LSAT] there was this and you should make sure you study that.'”
For any questions or more information about joining Phi Alpha Delta email Jocelyn Lucero at jlucero19@transy.edu.
Transy should have its own undergrad research journal. Here’s why.
This is Part 2 of a 2-Part series arguing that Transy should charter its own undergraduate research journal. Read Part 1 here.
When discussing the benefits of publishing scholarly research, much of the attention (rightly) focuses on the benefits to the authors. However, since this is an argument for chartering an undergrad research journal here at Transy, it’s only reasonable to also examine the benefits of publishing research gained by the publishing institution itself. In this case, that’s Transy.
Let’s start by looking at the purely intellectual argument for publishing. As a liberal arts college, Transy encourages its students to look into, study, investigate, and research a fantastically broad and eclectic hodgepodge of areas of study. Some of these areas, naturally, are more obscure than others. In research terms, that means there are areas of study that are of interest to Transy students that have an underdeveloped literature. In short, there may not be a lot written about an area that a Transy student is interested in . It only naturally follows that this is an opportunity for that student to research and publish in that area. Not only is this of benefit to the student, it is also to the benefit of Transy as an institution dedicated to the furthering of its students’ knowledge. Not only allowing but actively encouraging students to pursue their academic and intellectual interests is the highest goal of a liberal arts institution like Transy. And chartering a journal to help students do so is itself a step in fulfilling that goal.
However, we also live in the real world. So pie-in-the-sky intellectual arguments don’t by themselves carry the day. Let’s look at some more concrete benefits to the university.
While Transy is a liberal arts college, not primarily a research institution (like, say, UK), it’s undeniable that most college and university reputations are build in significant part by the quality and quantity of the original research they produce. As a university that’s currently attempting to figure out its place in the changing landscape of modern academia, Transy has a chance to create a culture of not just scholarship, but scholastic achievement, where the work done by Transy students has a chance to gain a wider audience and influence. This will in turn boost Transy’s regional, national, and international profile, giving the school a reputation as a place for students who are serious about their academic work.
Such a reputation, of course, would also help Transy in the never-ending recruitment search. Undergraduate journals are not so uncommon as to be unique, but they’re hardly an expected feature of the American university. Because of this relative scarcity, Transy could use the existence of its own undergrad journal as another selling point by which it distinguishes itself from all the other possible institutions a prospective student could attend. And even if the existence of an undergrad journal turns out to be a minimal factor in school selection, the other benefits to Transy still justify the expenses.
Those expenses, moreover, will likely be somewhat minimal. There is a well-established expectation that professional academics engage in peer-review processes; Transy can quite reasonably ask its faculty to prioritize draft manuscripts from Transy students, intended for Transy’s undergrad journal, during their peer-reviewing periods. This can be done at little-to-no extra cost to the university. The only real external costs are ones related to printing, and online storage space for electronic archival copies of the journal. The former is a legitimate concern, but unless Transy’s undergrad journal ends up on the NY Times’ bestseller list, the printing costs are unlikely to be so exorbitant as to seriously affect the budgetary concerns of the university. As for the latter—well, online storage space costs are already basically nonexistent.
Transy has the opportunity to not only benefits its students, but to further enhance its reputation as a premier liberal arts college. In doing so, it can create a space for students to benefit, and that can only reflect well on Transy as an institution. That reflection is likely to improve the reputation of Transy as a school that helps its students succeed in their endeavors, and that improved reputation is itself likely to attract more of the high-caliber students Transy wants to educate. Chartering an undergraduate journal is a cheap and effective way to help both Transy and Transy students. Let’s do it.
NBA to Louisville: Who Knows?
The state of Kentucky has been abuzz the last few weeks over the rumors swirling regarding a possible National Basketball Association (NBA) expansion franchise coming to the commonwealth’s largest city of Louisville. Rumors they may be, the excitement especially in the Derby City is certainly palpable.
Of course, professional basketball would not be an original concept for the state, as the Kentucky Colonels was one of the most successful franchises, in terms of both revenue and on-court product, in the now-defunct American Basketball Association (ABA). Winning the ABA championship in 1975, the Colonels were one of the remaining six ABA teams to avoid folding before the ABA-NBA merger in 1976; however, only four ABA franchises joined the NBA, Louisville not among them, leaving the city without professional basketball for the first time in nearly a decade. The 1975 championship banner still hangs in the rafters of historic Freedom Hall.
The rumors of a rebirth for professional basketball in Louisville began with a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the NBA’s players and owners which was thought to include provisions called expansion escalators that would make the prospects of adding franchises more ideal for the league. Although such language was not included in the final draft of the CBA, reports of impending expansion continue to flow. The excitement has persisted for several reasons.
Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, maintains that expansion at some point in the next several years is not off the table. Additonally, Louisville City Councilman Dan Johnson tweeted on January 18: “I have been working on getting the nba in Louisville this week!”
I reached out to the councilman, who had this to say about the situation: “It will help our state to have the Kentucky Colonels back. I want to be able to go to an [professional] game as I did as a child with my dad. I have worked on this for 20 years. It looks like it may be real, even though there are doubters.”
When asked about the timeframe for such expansion, Councilman Johnson said things could come to fruition in 2018-19.
However, Councilman Johnson has not released his source for much of this information, and hence the Louisville Metro Council refuses to file a permanent resolution indicating official support of NBA expansion to Louisville.
Proponents of the NBA’s potential expansion to Louisville cite the city’s lack of any “big four” professional teams, the revenues generated by college basketball in the state, the former success of the ABA Colonels, and the KFC Yum! Center being an NBA-ready facility as reasons the city deserves a franchise. In fact, the Yum! Center would be among the largest arenas used by any NBA team. However, it would be impossible for the NBA to play there under current circumstances, as University of Louisville athletics currently have scheduling priority.
So, all things considered, could the NBA be coming to Louisville? Ask again in several months.
