Letter from MTSU AD Chris Massaro

[Harry]

Read more: http://www.goblueraiders.com/content.cfm/id/77773

Good Morning Blue Raider Fans!

As the calendar creeps deeper into July, it provides the perfect opportunity to review our historic first season in Conference USA and to look forward to another great year of Blue Raider sports. I wanted to send you this letter to update you on the many things that are happening within our athletics department.

Facility Renovation Update

In keeping with our goal of providing the best home-field and home-court advantage in C-USA for our student-athletes, and thanks to your support, we enjoyed tremendous success at home with our football team and our men's and women's basketball teams. This past year, our football team, men's basketball team and women's basketball team combined for a 34-5 home record. This outstanding mark speaks to not only the accomplishments of our student-athletes, but also to the unwavering enthusiastic support our players enjoy every time they take the field or court by great fans such as you.

To make your visits to Murphy Center even more enjoyable and to help create an even better home-court advantage, we have completely remodeled the concession stands, renovated the concourse bathrooms, and have installed new heating and air-conditioning units. You will notice the differences immediately in your first visit to Murphy Center. The center will also feature new theatre-style court lighting, which will give us the ability to enhance our pre-game introductions and in-game timeouts. Please know that fan amenities and enhancements will continue to be a priority for us. We are confident that when we finish this phase of improvements in September/October, there will be no better place to watch college basketball than the historic Murphy Center.

To help increase our home-field advantage in football, our student athletes are currently enjoying a brand new, state-of-the-art, new playing surface at Floyd Stadium. This particular synthetic turf, considered the top-of-the-line playing surface manufactured by Shaw Sports Turf, extends wall-to-wall in the stadium as we eliminated the blue concrete apron surrounding the field. This creates additional playing surface space and makes our stadium even more multi-use for all of our teams to practice and train. Additionally, we have removed the center crown and leveled the playing surface giving Floyd Stadium one of the best playing surfaces in the country.