Posts tagged Berry College

A couple of years ago, my alma mater made the jump from NAIA athletics to NCAA Division III. Berry College currently has no football team, nor has it had one in recent memory. The conversation has come up many times about whether Berry ever would, or should add football to the list of sports it competes in. Not much has come of that thus far, but that could be changing soon.

Today, the school’s president, Stephen Briggs, sent out an email to alumni announcing that Berry and seven other schools are forming their own conference, and football was brought up. He addressed some of the history of the discussion of football that I mentioned above, and discusses the possible future of football at Berry. Here’s what he says:

Members of the new conference will begin working on detailed plans for the inaugural year of play in 2012-13, as the SCAC finishes out its last year of play in 2011-12. As part of this process, Berry will give careful consideration to the possibility of adding football and track and field. As you may know, on-campus discussion of football began last year independent of the forming of this new conference. That discussion will continue into the fall semester. We anticipate a decision by the Board of Trustees at its October meeting.

You can find some of this information in this press release on Berry’s website. Unfortunately the press release doesn’t contain the portion of the email that I quoted above.

This is a controversial topic among members of the Berry College community. Many seem to feel it will change the atmosphere of the school, or bring in a bad element. While I’ll admit there could be credence to those viewpoints, I have been and still am tentatively in favor of football being added to Berry athletics. I’m a fan of college football, and would love to drive down to Mount Berry, Georgia to cheer on the Vikings on a Saturday afternoon.

Berry College, alma mater to Lady Jessica and me, was hit hard by a storm Wednesday morning. Alex Middleton reporting for Viking Fusion (Berry student media) has the details:

According to the Berry Office of Public Relations, a “microburst” of a storm that only lasted for approximately 15 to 20 minutes ravaged the campus, starting around 8:30 a.m.

“I expect there are hundreds of trees down, ” said Whit Whittaker, Berry’s Chief of Staff. “There’s been lots of damage done to campus this morning.”

According to Whittaker, no persons have been injured because of storm damage, even though property damage is immense.

I’m so thankful that no one was hurt, but I feel terrible at what has happened to the campus. Thankfully most of the structures on campus remained unharmed, but I can’t help but think that it will take decades for the campus to recover from the loss of so many large, beautiful, old trees. I’m truly afraid that Jessica and I won’t recognize the place when we visit next.