By Shantelle Breaux

NEWS EDITOR

CROWLEY – At Tuesday’s meeting of the Crowley Rotary Club, the guest speaker was Scott Farmer, the senior associate athletic director at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Farmer, who will complete his first year at the school today, came to ULL from Alabama, where he, in a similar job, was at Troy University for eight years.

Farmer, who is obviously very enthusiastic about his job, says that he likes to begin every speech with “It’s a great day to be a Ragin’ Cajun.”

When Farmer first began his job at ULL, all the plans for the fall had already been made, so he took the time to sit back and observe the lay of the land. When ULL hosted the High School Jamboree last August, he was displeased with the shortcomings he saw at Cajun Field. The field was plain, not painted. Also when ULL hosted its first game, he noticed that trash cans were already full, so people started littering on the ground, the vendors ran out of food half-way through the game, and to make matters worse, they lost their first game.

Farmer more disappointed with the off-field performance, though. The school obviously wasn’t prepared, he stated.

He immediately set out to rectify the situation, keeping two goals in mind. Those goals were giving coaches and administrators what they needed to succeed, and preparing the school to be in the best conference they can be, or being marketable when the next conference came calling.

To that end, over the past year, ULL has opened a new indoor practice facility, which is much bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. The facility boasts a full-sized basketball court, a full-sized football practice field, cages for softball and baseball, and a brand new weight room for conditioning.

According to Farmer, this will help ULL in the recruitment of athletes, and will provide an edge in the conference.

Another improvement that has been made is brand new artificial turf on the football field with a 28 ft long center logo. The field looks good every day, stated Farmer, and will never be rained out again.

While these new improvements took care of ULL image issue, Farmer worked to make marketing and recruiting priorities as well. He brought marketing and promotions under the auspices of the Athletics Department. ULL is now doing all of their brochures, which will be published every season now, posters and schedule cards, and a 92 page full color magazine-type program, out in the fall, in-house. A new concessionaire has also been hired for games.

“I think that great days are ahead of us,” said Farmer.