Baseball Stadium Announcement Press Conference Quotes

Oklahoma State Athletic Director Mike Holder

Opening Statement
"Welcome everybody. This is a special day for Oklahoma State University, OSU athletics and the Stillwater community. I'd like to thank a lot of people. First and foremost, our president Burns Hargis. He couldn't be here today, but if you ever doubt his influence or impact on our campus or our university, just take a tour. If you haven't been here in a few years, a few months or even a few days, it's pretty spectacular what's happened with the transformation of our campus and our university. We've had great leadership from him.

"I'd also like to thank our Board of Regents. Without them none of this could have happened. I know we've got a least one regent here today, Calvin Anthony, and to Calvin's credit he's also one of the major donors of this baseball stadium. He's there at every game sitting right above the third baseline. He's already told us he expects to get those same seats when the new stadium is open. With the contribution he made that shouldn't be a problem. We also had another regent, Joe Hall. He gave a major gift as well, and I appreciate his contributions, as all the regents have done for us in the past with projects.

"I want to thank Rick Cooper and his father Bert. Bert passed away several years ago. We referred to him as Superman. I was so blessed to have the Cooper family and WW Steel. They're the best of all steel craft fabricators in all the world. You can't name a big project in our country that they're not a part of, or haven't been a part of. From Jerry Jones' Stadium in Dallas to Madison Square Garden to the largest construction project in the history of our country that's going on right now in New York City, which is Hudson Yards. If you haven't heard about it, you should Google it up and learn a little bit about it. Rick Cooper gave us a lot of advice, engineering, expertise, he worked hand-in-hand with our contractor Manhattan Construction to get us the best stadium you can get for the smallest amount of money, even though it's a large amount when you get to the final number.

"I'd also like to thank my good friend Bob Howard in Oklahoma City for keeping me humble every day. It's good to have a friend like that.

"I'd also like to thank Boone Pickens. People say, 'Well this is a baseball stadium. It doesn't have anything to do with football...' Years ago, maybe 2000 culminated in 2005, he gave a huge gift of $165 million, built a football stadium and transformed our football program, and we have one of the better stadiums in college football with Boone Pickens Stadium. We're really proud of that but would've never had it without the generosity of Mr. Pickens. But it went far beyond that. He's the one that had the vision for the Athletic Village and put $45 million of his hard-earned money into acquiring the 100 acres that became the blank canvas for Athletic Village. Then all the things he has done for academics, just like I mentioned about Burns Hargis, if you doubt the influence of Boone Pickens, just take a drive around. I'd hate to think what our campus, our University, our athletic department would look like if it wasn't for Boone Pickens. He didn't stop with $165 billion. I got so excited the day we had that announcement and closed it by saying, 'and this won't be my last gift,' and it wasn't, and they were all big. He also inspired others to give and his good friend Sherman Smith and his son Will Smith provided the funding for the Sherman Smith Training Center. Boone inspired Mike and Anne Greenwood to help build this tennis complex. He inspired Neal Patterson, who unfortunately passed away this summer, with his wife to build a soccer stadium, and now we're here for the baseball stadium. This won't be the last thing we do, but it's very, very significant. Probably bigger than anything we thought we'd ever build or do for baseball.

"We are doing this to attract the best and the brightest baseball players from all over the world. We want to bring them to Stillwater to train them, to educate them, to teach them how to dream big and make those dreams come true. Those are the primary reasons. If you want to have a great baseball team, I don't care how great your leadership and coaching is, you better have some talent to work with. Make no mistake about it, this is about getting into the game and attracting the best and the brightest from all around the world.

"We also want to attract young families to the stadium. Josh Holliday ... one of the great stories is how he was raised at Allie P. Reynolds. He grew up here. He has fond memories from there. I think a lot of what happened in that stadium is responsible for the man that he grew to be and the leader he became, and we want that to happen for more young people. It's also necessary, I think, to build a loyal and passionate fanbase. It takes more than just a team. It's nice to have a nice facility that shows that you're committed to your program, and we expect to build a stadium that will attract that and have a seriously significant home-field advantage for our team. We want to use this stadium to unite the community, to bring it closer to our campus, to our university and athletic programs. We want this to be the place to be, the happening spot in the spring and early summer every year in Stillwater, Oklahoma. There's no reason that we can't fill this for every game just from our community.

"This took the work of a lot of people. I tip my hat to Larry Reece and Matt Grantham and Shawn Taylor. We've got a small team of fundraisers, and they do incredible things. Who would've thought we could sell out 123 suites in our football stadium? Who would've thought we could sell every club seat, close to 4,000 of them in our football stadium? There are going to be suites and club seats to sell in this new facility. We raised a lot of money, and we never could've done it without them.

"To inspire people to give, you've got to have a great story to tell. I don't care how great a salesman you are. If you've got a lousy product, good luck. We have a great product. It's based on the tradition. Our program goes back for decades. I think we've had baseball here for 109 years. Between Josh Holliday and Rob Walton you got two really great coaches. I consider them both head coaches. Both of them played baseball here. Rob pitched in four College world Series. He won four conference championships. Those two together, I don't know how many coaches in today's game actually played in a college world series and coached in one, but those two guys did it and their both on our staff and as long their here we got a great story to tell. Great leadership.

"Also the generosity of our people. It's all inspiring. I can think back to the 1990s when I was coaching. I think the general consensus of Oklahoma State University is there is a lot of great people. It's a land grant institution. Most of us came from poor beginnings and unfortunately we just don't have the finical wherewithal to do things at a high level. Fast forward to today and you look at the amount of money we raised and the kind of facilities we've built all over this campus its awe inspiring. I was trying to put a pencil to it, its north of $400 million getting close to $500 million, maybe more than that we've raised since Boone Pickens stepped up to the plate. We talked to a lot of people to get to the Promised Land on this baseball stadium.

"In closing, I just would like to say OSU is a special place where all things are possible. A place where no dreams are too big. A place where every day when I walk down the hallways in Gallagher-Iba or Boone Pickens Stadium, I rub shoulders with the best of the best. People that have been to the pinnacle of their sport. John Smith, for example. I could make an argument that he's the greatest amateur wrestler of all time in the United States of America. One of the greatest in the world. He is just one example of people we run into everyday. This is going to be a new day in OSU Baseball. It will be amazing to watch this complex come to life. I can't wait for Opening Day and to see that first pitch out there.

"I'll close with one quote and a couple of comments. I was driving to a meeting with a donor. The quote goes like this, 'If youth knew, if age could.' Think about that a minute. I say this all the time, what you dream about, what you think about, what you talk about, what you work hard to accomplish, that is what will happen. If I could talk to Mike Holder at 19 years of age, that's what I would tell him. I think that's what education, higher education and coaching is all about. There is going to be some great things happen in this baseball stadium in this baseball stadium. It's going to be because of the feeling you get when you walk in and you see the grass and smell the grass. When you watch our players, the way they play the game and represent us and you look at our coaching staff and look around the stadium at all the bright, shiny faces and the joy and happiness exists on that playing field 30 times a year. It's a place you want to be. You would never, ever miss a game in Stillwater."

On the plans for Allie P. Reynolds Stadium after the new stadium opens
"We've thought about that a lot, but I don't think anyone has made a decision yet. There are a lot of options out there: keeping it, you can repurpose it, or tear it down. If we tore it down, I think we'd do something similar or do what they did in Omaha with Rosenblatt. I understand they still have home plate there and a couple of foul poles. If anybody has any good ideas, we're open to suggestions."

On the process for naming the stadium
"For right now, it's just Oklahoma State University Baseball Stadium. We haven't talked about the donors yet, and that's because several of our major benefactors at this point prefer to be anonymous. We're honoring those wishes. Hopefully, at some point in the future that will change. Maybe we can have another great press conference and talk about some other great things that have happened. As of right now, we're going to keep that low key.

"Just know that we raised the money to build this. There will be a little bit of short-term borrowing because you have to bridge the gap between pledges being made and pledges being paid, but we won't have any problem chinning that bar internally, thanks to the incorporation of the OSU Foundation. We've got a great team of people here at the university who work together to make this sort of thing happen."

On what could be next after the baseball field
"We have a commitment, on the part of the Athletic Department, to build an indoor track. We want to build one to the quality you could host a national championship for national indoor. Do we have that funded? No. Do we have all that planned? No. But we have decided to do it, so it's inevitable. It will happen.

"Then the next sport we are going to address is wrestling. Unfortunately, I think in a lot of ways since 1938 when they build Gallagher Hall, we have done nothing for wrestling. We have taken it for granted. We just assumed it would be the best in all the world. It has won 34 national championships in spite of us. That needs to change. We need to make a statement that OSU wrestling is the King of the Hill. We plan on doing something to make to give a physical manifestation to that commitment, to that responsibility. When will that happen? I don't know. Sooner, the better. But that will probably go over there on the east side of Gallagher Iba Arena, somewhere. We have that nice hedge field area. What will it cost? I don't know, but it will probably be pretty expensive. But if you can't raise money for OSU Wrestling, you're not a very good fundraiser. I mean, people get emotional about that. There's a responsibility to that sport. I tell people all the time that you can make an argument that we are who we are as an institution because of what Art Griffith and Ed Gallagher did as wrestling coaches here to show that you can be the best in the whole world at something right here on our campus in Stillwater. We owe a debt of gratitude that far transcends the national championships won by wrestling.

"Then once we get that done, we will probably go back around and it will be time to put a brighter face on everything we have already done. I thought when I first took over as Athletic Director that you build something and that's the end of it. No, that's the beginning. The expensive part is the maintaining and taking care of those facilities. So, we probably need to go in and refresh everything we have done up until this time."

Head Coach Josh Holliday
On what the announcement means to him
"It's kind of amazing. The first day—I think it was about three weeks ago—that I actually took this road home one day, I saw this big construction fence up and big yellow tractors, I realized there was something going on right there. It kind of hit me that this is all happening. Obviously, when the official word came together and the date was set to share this with everyone, it was really remarkable. It has been worth it every step of the way, and it's been a great lesson to see how something like this occurs. It wouldn't have happened without amazing support and amazing generosity. His vision, this wouldn't have happened without him.

"When you're a coach and you're at your university, all you want to know is that you're going to be given a chance to try to do something and be the best at it. From day one, Coach Holder has made that opportunity real for us. He made it real when we hired Rob and Michelle (Walton). He's made it real with the kids and how we train them and take care of them. He's made it real with the stadium, and I'll tell you it's amazing. When you look at this facility and consider it for all it's going to be, he's given us a chance to compete for championships and be in a first-class setting each and every day. It's a really remarkable moment, and one that we're very fortunate to be a part of. Truly amazing and very inspiring."

On how tough it will be to say goodbye to Allie P. Reynolds Stadium
"You'll never say goodbye to it. You'll take with you all of the great moments in time, which tradition and sports are all about. You take all of the moments that occurred there which allowed this to become a reality: the great teams, the great moments, the winning, the building of people who went on to have great, successful lives—many of which have helped us make this new stadium a reality.

"That facility has served us so well and allowed us to realize we can be the best. We'll take that with us, and we'll take those moments and players and coaches that made that place light up for so many years and celebrate them each and every day. We'll welcome them back to see our new home. That's part of developing, that's part of time, and that's part of evolving. Those moments never leave. They're in your mind, they're in your heart, they're in your photos when you look back and laugh about how tight the uniforms used to fit, or how much hair you used to have, or how much skinnier you used to be. You never leave the moments.

"What you take with you is a future, and all of those guys that have made this place special, they want this for this program. We're going to celebrate the heck out of the past because that's who we are, but we're really excited about what we can become."

On if there are any plans to honor the history of the program at the new facility
"The history will be well celebrated. When you see this stadium and all the detail that Jim and his team have put in, and all of the thought that has gone into our goals: to target our community, to target our student body, to train our players, to create a gameday atmosphere similar to what we see every Saturday and every time Gallagher-Iba opens its doors, to chronicling the history and the past. That's going to be done in such a first-class manner that anyone who has worn this uniform will walk into this stadium and realize how much they're valued.

"This is such a well-thought-out, well-planned, comprehensive stadium that our history and the individuals that created it and all of the great moments will be on display both in the stadium and inside on the walls where our players will walk past those moments and remember how this place was built. We're going to celebrate all the great moments and players, and the titles we've won over the years."

On keeping the natural grass playing surface
"Well, it was our preference all along to have natural grass. With the amazing crew we have here to take care of it, it would be almost criminal not to have that beautiful grass. We looked at artificial turf only from the standpoint of, 'Would it make sense because of weather and what not?' But with modern drainage technology, with our heritage as a university and with the purity of a grass and dirt field, our feeling is that we're training these boys to someday play in the major leagues. And Major League Baseball is played, for the most part, on dirt and grass. There is still nothing like a perfectly manicured baseball field to wake you up each and every day and inspire you to work. It's just too much of a pride item for us. It's too much of a baseball purity that we didn't want to sacrifice or compromise, as Coach [Holder] said earlier."

On what elements of the new stadium he's most exciting about
"All of it. The best way I can describe it to you is like this, when you play or coach or are raised in baseball, there's not a ballpark you go into where you don't say, 'Oh, that's pretty cool.' Sometimes you think it's pretty cool because there is an old scoreboard. Or sometimes you think it's pretty cool because somebody once played there. Sometimes there's a train track and the train goes by. Every time I had a chance to walk in a ballpark, whether it was in the SEC, ACC, Pac-12, Big 12, and Rob's (Walton) experience across baseball, we walked away from a ballpark and said, 'Wouldn't it be cool to have something like that?' We took every element or scenario that we've come across, whether it was the way the fans interacted, where the students sat, the way the families were involved, the training piece - with how to build our players every day or with batting practice areas and we went and sat down and said, 'This is the best version I've ever seen of this. How can we incorporate this into our plan?' With Jim's (Hasenbeck) help, we designed a stadium that I think has, 'Wouldn't it be cool to have that?' in every single corner of it. We thought our way through it as a player, as coaches, we looked at is as fans, as baseball purists who love to come to the game and just watch the game, as a member of the OSU student body who's looking for something fun to do and wants to go out and be active and we looked at it through the lens of the Stillwater community. Young families and little kids, because that's college baseball. That's how stadiums like this are full each and every time you suit up. Because you engage all the different elements of a true fan base. As I said, I want every kid who has a birthday in the spring to have it at this stadium. I want every family looking for something to do to come share the day with us. I want every baseball player in the country that wants to be coached, cared for and grown to want to come do it here. Because when they look around, they see that this is the very best of the best. That was the mindset we took when we designed this. As coach Holder said, shoot for the stars. Let's do this right. Let's do this in a way that you think big and you dream big and you try to build the best college baseball program in the country. That was the vision behind how we went about designing it and I think all the elements of it are fabulous."

On the dimensions and amenities of the new stadium
"We started with the field itself. When you design something like this, you'd be shocked at the amount of detail necessary for Jim (Hasenbeck) and his team to build around. We designed a stadium that would reward good baseball. We want to reward good pitching with dimensions that allow you to pitch successfully to certain parts of the field. We wanted to reward good hitting, where a ball hit well has a chance to go out. Finally, we wanted to build dimensions that would prepare our team for the unique setting in the College World Series that's played in. T.D. Ameritrade field is a big ballpark and the style of play to win in that stadium is very unique. There are no wind-blown home runs. There are no flyballs to the middle of the field that return much of a reward on offense. Considering our wind patterns, our current stadium and what we've grown accustomed to there, knowing how our winds blow early in the season, how they blow late in the season, we came up with dimensions that we think keep the ball fair to left field so that the south wind doesn't blow any fair ball over the fence. We provided a big, spacious area in center field to reward excellent defense and timely hitting. And we created a spot in right field where a really good left-handed hitter could come in and do some serious damage to certain spaces. I think we built a balanced field, which is what the College World Series is built on. Yet, we put some of our own dimensions to it to fit Stillwater and to fit our wind and to make sure the ballpark plays well. You want to walk out there and say, 'This field plays fair.' We want to be able to recruit to the idea that it's a beneficial environment for a hitter, a pitcher and it rewards elite-level defense. I think Jim has the exact square footage or linear footage to the fence and different locations that he can share with you."

On the area for current students who are already playing professional ball
"It's a huge consideration. It's why we designed the space particularly for those guys. I want every one of these guys to pursue their pro careers and chase that dream until the very, very end. But in saying that, we want them to finish school. We want them to pursue that dream but also have a secondary vision of who they want to become when baseball comes to an end. To welcome guys back in the off-season to train, to give them a home, to let them finish school, to let them realize that this will be their home for as long as they want it to be was a big part of our consideration. Mainly for them to feel welcomed that they have a place to go. When you are a minor league player, you don't anywhere you go, you don't have a home. You are in between always, hoping that the next stop on the journey is a higher one. So, we want our guys to know they will always have a home. We want them to know that the school is 100 percent behind them. Finishing their school, getting their degree and training their bodies and preparing for professional baseball at the highest level. That's going to be a big part of what I want all these guys to leave here knowing, and I want them to come back and take advantage of it."

Studio Architecture's Jim Hasenbeck

On what makes the stadium unique from an architectural standpoint
"There's a number of things that I think make this a very special complex. It had to meet certain goals - number one was to develop players. Number two was the fan experience and number three Josh (Holliday) hit on, prepare the team for Omaha. I've got a list here that I'll try to read quickly - it has just the amenities and there are many, many of them, so I'll just hit the high points. First of all, it sits at a major intersection, which is a little unusual for a collegiate ballpark. It sits at the corner of Washington and McElroy as you know. It forms a new north gateway to Oklahoma State University campus. Now, that makes the Greenwood Tennis Center special because of that. That needed to be taken into account. The facility needs to look and feel like an OSU, modified-Georgian piece of architecture. It's important because Oklahoma State University has a very unique feel throughout the entire campus. We're trying to keep that feel throughout the Athletic Village as it grows and with the different venues.

"It has a 360-degree concourse. You can walk completely around this ballpark and watch the game at any point in time. There's nothing between your walk and the field, which is very, very unusual. It may be the only ballpark at the collegiate level where you can do that. There are two main entrances - one at home plate and there's a center field entrance. That center field entrance is attached to an over 600-car parking lot, which I know Allie P. Stadium today lacks a little bit of that type of facility and we've taken that into account.

"This ballpark has a glass batter's-eye, which is like no other. It's a dark piece of glass that you can still see through. It will allow people to actually watch a ballgame from straight behind the pitching mound and that is different than any other place you'll see. All filled, it seats 6,000 to 6,500 people and it is expandable to about 8,000. It has 13 suites and 400 premium seats. In the outfield, there are 1,500 seats on 5-foot deep terraces that are right on the other side of the outfield fence. We have tailgating tents. The outfield is lined on the concourse with tailgating tents. Those are to encourage people to come early and stay late. To just enjoy the game of baseball, both from watching warmups to celebrating the victory after."

On the student section in the new facility
"We have a special student section. That student section has been pushed close to the field. It's down the third base line. So, it's cranked so that is has a great view of the infield. Also, the top couple of rows have low seating, which is, again, kind of unique for a student section especially. Again we are trying to encourage students to come early, hang out, have fun and just enjoy the game of baseball.

On family areas in the new facility
"We have family areas, family-friendly areas. We have tents down the first base line and behind those playground areas for toddlers and young kids. Moms and dads can watch and enjoy the game but still keep an eye on their little ones as they enjoy what little kids enjoy."

On the amenities for player development
"We have an approximately 2,000 square feet video board down the left field line. It's attached to an indoor batting facility. I mentioned that player development was one of the goals. And this has a very unique feature in that Josh, Rob and the rest of the coaching staff can pretty much stand in on area and they have hitting, pitching, fielding and classroom is pretty much all right there in one area. It's almost like the hub of a wheel. And that, to my understanding, is very, very unique for a collegiate ballpark. It will help them and help the players in their player development. This is designed around day-to-day practice. It's right-adjacent to a 26,000 square foot clubhouse that houses the locker room and training room. So, this is a wonderful and very special facility."

Oklahoma State University Athletics

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