How high can they jump? This year, Eastern University has opened the doors to a new campus in the city of Philadelphia called Eastern in the City.
The program allows students to attend classes for two years with the option of transferring to Eastern’s main campus their junior year.
These students have access to many of the same benefits as Eastern’s main campus students, health care is an example.
Now they are requesting a bit more: sports. A group of 15 students are negotiating the possibility of playing on Eastern’s men’s basketball team.
Men’s basketball coach, Matt Nadelhoffer himself has been out in Philadelphia recruiting potential players.
Nadelhoffer has a team of three Eastern students helping him coordinate the process so that EIC students have a liaison to talk with throughout the process.
Nadelhoffer said that a junior varsity team has been organized for EIC students to join, and if they show enough talent, varsity will be to accept new teammates.
However, just like in basketball, even with a lay-up there are obstacles that stand in the way of reaching the goal.
In order to achieve EIC’s goal of having students playing sports on Eastern’s main campus, these students will face a transportation problem.
“Having a chance at academics and sports is a great opportunity, but travel and transportation is our biggest road block,” Nadelhoffer said.
At this point, Eastern is still working on possible solutions to this problem, though none have been determined yet.
Nadelhoffer is excited about the prospect of having new recruits, but is not naive to the struggle at hand.
He said that these students have to understand that practices cannot be missed regularly nor can his team be late to games.
With these expectations in mind, how high will these men jump in order to slam dunk into the full college experience?