LIBERTY STUDENT NEWS

With Liberty University on its Spring Break this week, more than 500 homeschooled basketball players from as far away as Austin, Texas, Brevard County, Fla., and Binghamton, N.Y., have invaded the campus for the 12th annual East Coast Basketball Championships.

The 52-team event, which started Monday and concludes Friday, features 130 games in 13 divisions, ranging from middle school girls to varsity boys (five divisions).

For the players, it’s their version of the NIT, with last week’s 300-team National Christian Homeschool Basketball Championships in Oklahoma City more like the NCAAs.

The tournament is set up in a World Cup format, with pool play separating the 20 varsity boys teams into five four-team brackets for today’s semifinals and Friday’s championship games.

This year’s event originally had 72 teams from 12 states signed up, before 20 — mostly from Indiana, Illinois and Iowa — pulled out due to conflicts with Easter weekend festivities.

There is no qualifying criteria for this year’s event, an open invitational.

But many of the teams are their state’s champions and that could be a requirement in the future if the field becomes too large.

The Greensboro Panthers and Baltimore Chargers are among the favorites in the varsity boys “5A” competition, along with the team from Texas, the Upstate (S.C.) Eagles and Lighthouse Christian (N.C.).

The Lynchburg Patriots, a middle school-aged team, are the only local representative.

Eleven of the championship games will take place at LU’s Vines Center, with the other two — today’s girls varsity Division A and 2A finals at 5:45 and 7:30 p.m. — moved to Liberty Christian Academy to give the Flames women a chance to practice before Saturday’s NCAA opener against ODU.

Besides renting LU’s facilities, with access to 13 wooden floor courts, mostly in the LaHaye Center, Davis hired local high school referees from the Colonial Officials Association and football players from LCA to operate the clocks and the scoreboards.

There is no admission fee for any of the games.

Lynchburg’s astronaut, Leland Melvin, is coming to Liberty Univeristy.

Melvin is scheduled to speak at convocation on April 7 as part of his first trip to his hometown since a 13-day mission on the Space Shuttle Atlantis last month.

The university is paying to fly Melvin from Houston NASA to Lynchburg but the exact dates the astronaut will arrive and leave have not been determined.

The dramatic increase in the city’s bus ridership by Liberty University students is one of those classic win-win situations. At least that’s how Mike Carroll, general manager of the Greater Lynchburg Transit Company, sees it. And he’s right.

More riders generate greater revenues for the transit system and ultimately better service for all of its customers. Also, nearly every one of those riders means one fewer vehicle on city streets, which is bound to improve traffic congestion on and near the LU campus.

Those increases in student passengers also help the system keep its head above choppy financial waters as it provides transportation for others in the city who need it on a daily basis.

Liberty partnered with GLTC last year to offer an on-campus bus service aimed at reducing university traffic. Those new routes, which are paid for by LU, soon doubled the city’s total bus ridership.
The numbers are still rising. Since the beginning of the current school year and the end of January, LU saw a little more than 980,000 riders board the buses, which is also double the number of all other GLTC routes combined.

The service at LU started with six GLTC buses. Transit officials plan to increase that number to about 12 in peak hours. The additional vehicles will come from older buses recently replaced by the purchase of eight new hybrid buses that were placed in service last month.

The ridership has been so popular that the university is pursuing a new off-campus service for the next school year. The additional routes have been described as a commuter service by LU officials and would target housing developments with high concentrations of Liberty students and employees whose neighborhoods are not served by the transit system.

The growth of service at LU, however, may not be enough to restore service to a heavily traveled route that runs through downtown past Lynchburg General Hospital. Transit officials asked for an increase in the annual operating budget to put more buses on the route that runs from The Plaza to Main Street to Lynchburg General and back.

It’s one of the city’s busiest bus routes. Last year, service on the route was reduced from every 30 to every 60 minutes to accommodate budget cuts. Budget prospects appear just as bleak in the coming year, as city officials have characterized spending for the fiscal year beginning July 1 as a “maintenance”-only plan and not one that would feature spending for new programs or added bus routes.

Carroll said the transit system would continue to explore ways to restore that popular service through downtown, but he noted that other routes are also facing challenges.
The LU service can be viewed as the blessing it has become to the transit service when looked at in terms of the overall budget. The $6.3 million transit budget for the coming year is a 12 percent increase over the current year, a rise that’s almost entirely attributable to the university.

With the planned expansion of service to LU, the GLTC contract would increase from $932,000 to $1.5 million, a 60 percent rise.

Liberty’s use of the GLTC buses has truly been a win-win situation. The buses have helped to keep traffic moving on the LU campus and the cost of the service has helped keep the transit system afloat financially. City bus riders — for whom good transportation services are essential — become the beneficiaries.

Do you remember Ken Karcher? The guy who got fired before Rocco came along? Well he’s back in the college football scene. He’s been hired to be the Quarterback Coach for Toledo’s football team. He’s on the rise again!