Johns Hopkins Announces Capital Campaign to Support Blue Jay Football Program
BALTIMORE, MD -- Johns Hopkins University Director of Athletics Tom Calder announced the launching of a capital campaign to support the Blue Jay football program today. The initiative is the largest fund raising campaign in program history and will significantly impact the facilities currently utilized by the Blue Jay football team. Calder and head coach Jim Margraffare working closely with Blue Jays Unlimited, the official fund raising arm of Hopkins athletics, on the campaign.
The $750,000 campaign is geared exclusively to the non-playing facilities utilized by the team with emphasis on the team locker rooms, coaches' offices and meeting space. A number of naming opportunities and support levels are available and anyone interested in supporting the initiative can contact Grant Kelly, Associate Director of Development for Athletics (410/516-4096 or gkelly11@jhu.edu).
The team has utilized a single undersized locker room for more than 20 years, but will now have the luxury of utilizing two adjacent locker rooms that will provide each player with a custom wooden locker. Both locker rooms will also include space for team, unit and position meetings with state-of-the-art audio-visual capabilities to view game, opponent and practice film. The locker room facilities will be completed in time for use during the upcoming 2012 season.
The coaching staff will relocate its current office spaces in the lower level of the Newton White Athletic Center at the conclusion of the 2012 season to the main level of the building, where they will now be housed in a dedicated office suite. Here, individual offices will be available for all full-time members of the coaching staff. The office suite will also include a digital media center that will include everything the staff needs to send, receive, breakdown and view film of opponents, recruits and the current team. Currently the staff utilizes two separate offices with all assistant coaches sharing one space.
The construction of a conference room located next to the coaches' offices will complete the campaign. The conference room will provide adequate space for the entire coaching staff to meet, while also being utilized for recruiting, position meetings and many of the other day-to-day activities of the program.
Under Margraff's guidance, Johns Hopkins posted a 10-1 record, won its third straight Centennial Conference title and finished the season ranked 19th in the AFCA Division III Poll in 2011. The Centennial title was the seventh for Johns Hopkins since 2002, while the Blue Jays made their third trip to the NCAA Playoffs since 2005.
Johns Hopkins will carry a 14-game regular season winning streak into the 2012 season and will open the season at home for the first time since 2008 when Randolph-Macon visits Homewood Field on Saturday, September 1.
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