UB Stadium’s yet-to-be-opened premium seating area will have a new name to go along with its grand opening in a few weeks when the football team hosts Albany.
The UB Council unanimously approved to name the stadium’s new premium seating area, formally called the West Club, the Edmond J. Gicewicz Club on Wednesday – in honor of a longtime athletics booster and former UB professor and student athlete.
The honoring comes after an anonymous donor requested the name change with an undisclosed gift to the Blue and White Fund. The amount was not disclosed but does rank in the top 10 largest donations UB Athletics has ever received.
“[Gicewicz has] meant so much to our athletics program and this university,” said Athletic Director Danny White. “He was a tremendous student-athlete, a dedicated and caring team physician and today remains one of our most beloved and recognizable faces at UB football games.”
Gicewicz was an assistant professor of clinical surgery and clinical orthopedics at UB and founded the University Sports Medicine Institute. He’s had a long history with UB Athletics – he played football, basketball and baseball for the Bulls before he graduated in 1952 and served as the football team’s physician for 27 years. The UB Athletics Hall of Fame, of which he is a member, is already named in honor of he and his wife Connie.
The new namely Edmond J. Gicewicz Club will be a 400-seat private section on the west side of UB Stadium for donors to the Blue and White Fund. Donors have to make at least a $1,000 donation for the outdoor seating, while a minimum $1,200 donation gets them access to the indoor lounge. Donors still have to pay an additional $125 for season tickets.
Eric Gross, associate athletic director of development, told The Spectrum back in April that the club would cost $700,000 to $900,000 and funds came solely from donations.
The premium seating area is still undergoing construction but the athletic department has maintained it will be ready for the Bulls’ home opener on Sept. 5.
The ‘West Club’ was announced last April and was a change up from the athletic department’s original plan for the ‘East Club’ – a premium seating area on the east side of the stadium that would have sat 1,600. UB Athletics decided to build a smaller club seating on the stadium’s west side instead because it received just over 300 donations for the East Club and the structure for the West Club was already in place with private and media suites.
Gross said in April that the East Club was still a goal for the athletic department.
White said donations like the one made in Gicewicz’s honor will help UB Athletics secure the resources it needs, like an on-campus field house. UB is currently the only school in the Mid-American Conference without an indoor practice facility and White said not having one is a significant challenge to Buffalo coaches with recruiting.
“This very special gift gets us one step closer toward that goal. It is only through gifts such as this that we will be able to offer all of our coaches and student-athletes the facilities that are commensurate with our expectations of a championship level program,” White said.
The Edmond J. Gicewicz club will open Saturday, Sept. 5 when the Bulls host Albany. Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m.
Tom Dinki is the editor in chief. He can be reached at tom.dinki@ubspectrum.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tomdinki.
