The completion of the Athletics and Recreation Complex (ARC) marks the start of a new era in sports, recreational and intercollegiate, at Baruch. Opened in September 2002, the 36,800-square-foot ARC occupies three subfloors in Baruch’s futuristic Vertical Campus complex, the 17-floor building that takes up nearly an entire city block between Lexington and Third Avenues and 24th and 25th Streets and serves as campus hub.
The ARC offers an overwhelming array of facilities and equipment. The Main Gym is the scene of casual pick-up games as well as a splendid showcase for cheering crowds upward of 1,200. It encloses three full basketball courts and is equipped for volleyball. The Auxiliary Gym also encloses a full basketball court and is equipped for volleyball, tennis, and badminton play. There are three racquetball courts, and saunas are available within the main locker rooms. The Fitness Center offers rooms of lifecycles, recumbent bicycles, stair climbers, treadmills, Universal and Hammer Strength equipment, rowing machines, and banks of free weights, among other fitness stations. The Aquatics Center provides an Olympic-sized pool, its six generous lanes accommodating open and lap swimming and offering a home to Baruch’s revitalized varsity swimming teams.
One need only review the history of Baruch’s sports programs’ trials and tribulations to marvel anew at the present facility and the opportunities it presents students, staff, alumni, and the community at large.

When Baruch College became a senior college in The City University of New York system in 1968, it began developing its own sports program, separate from the then-legendary City College teams.
Baruch’s basketball teams first practiced and played in what became known as “the Box,” a shy-of-regulation-size court on the sixth floor of the 17 Lex building. The next venue: the 69th Regiment Armory on East 25th Street, nicknamed “the Icebox,” with temperatures so cold in the winter (often in the 40s) that players wore winter coats on the sidelines and referees jogged during timeouts to keep warm. In the 1980s, the team moved its operation to Xavier High School’s gym, on West 16th Street. There, obstacles included another short court and having to wait until Xavier’s practice ended before beginning games. Practicing in “the Box” and “the Icebox” for competitions held on regulation-sized courts took its toll: Baruch players tended to tire quickly on other teams’ courts. Longtime Basketball Coach Ray Rankis devised special plays, like half-court traps on defense, to try to make a positive of a negative.
And the other varsity sports had it no better, with the baseball team playing in Brooklyn, the cross-country team running in the Bronx, and tennis teams playing in Queens. Baruch’s pool facilities were among the weakest offerings, with a small, 1920s-era, non-competition-sized pool in the basement of the 17 Lex building. Today, because of the newly opened and wonderfully appointed ARC, Baruch has been able to add swimming to its varsity roster. The College’s new aquatics director, Poushaen Gunasinghe, has already spotted a future star among his novice swimmers: Zwaihat Nauzos, a sophomore from Nigeria with a fierce backstroke. Gunasinghe is one of the enthusiastic young staffers, hired this past September, to get the ARC up and running.

Bill Eng, Baruch’s director of athletics, has been at the College since 1973. He’s seen a lot of changes. Eng couldn’t be more pleased with the ARC and with his young staff. The athletics program has a full-time staff of 11, plus part-time coaches and approximately 40 student aides who staff the ARC on weekends and off-hours when the rest of the College is nearly empty. Indeed, all the students, staffers or not, who increasingly congregate in the ARC provide a constant rush of subterranean energy to the Vertical Campus. You can almost feel it way up on the 14th—the building’s topmost—floor.
Eng has no doubt that the overall quality of sports at Baruch will improve markedly as a result of the College’s new facilities. “I think there will be more school spirit as well,” he predicts. The new facilities represent a small part of Baruch’s renewed commitment to do right by its students, who have had to suffer with inferior sports and recreational facilities for far too long. “We see drastic changes already,” Eng says. “All the teams have been enhanced. More and more students come to see the facilities and join the teams. Squad sizes have been enlarged for all our teams.” The new era has the College fielding a total of 12 varsity teams. They include men’s and women’s teams in basketball, volleyball, and tennis. Baruch women also compete in cross-country running and softball, while the men field varsity teams in soccer and baseball.
All Baruch students, whether or not they’re members of a varsity team, can now benefit from the magnificent new facilities in the ARC. Faculty, staff, alumni, and community residents are also joining in increasing numbers. Since everyone except the students pays a modest membership fee, the ARC is expected to be fully self-supporting within three years.
To get additional information on ARC facilities and membership, visit www.scsu.baruch.cuny.edu/scsu/ath/athhome.html or call 646-312-5044.

For a while there, people were asking Ray Rankis for his autograph. It was a little embarrassing for a guy who’d coached basketball in obscurity for nearly two decades. But when your photo turns up on the front page of the New York Times, there’s no way to avoid celebrity status, temporary though it may be. On Nov. 27, 2002, a lengthy article in the Times introduced Coach Rankis and the Baruch Bearcats to New York City as that gritty, never-say-die team that, after years in the wilderness, finally has a home. The evening before, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams scored resounding victories, the men defeating SUNY New Paltz, 87-67, while the women crushed Yeshiva, 64-33. After nearly 30 years of playing ball on inappropriate, dingy, and distant arenas, the Baruch hoopsters finally had a home court of their own—and public recognition to go with it.
Baruch College’s new gymnasium, with its red bleachers and digital game clocks, has made a huge difference in the Bearcats morale. “They’ve got more strut in their stuff,” says Rankis. “It’s like putting on a nice suit. You feel better, you look better, you’re ready to challenge the world.” That hundreds of students seemed to become devoted basketball fans virtually overnight didn’t hurt either. Even the new name, “Bearcats,” has given the teams a lift.

—ZB