Editor’s Note: This is an op-ed written by editor-in-chief Ben Leeds; any thoughts or opinions expressed are his own.
In the early weeks of March, most college students spend a peaceful few days away somewhere warm. Maybe it’s on a beach in Florida. Maybe it’s at a resort in Mexico. Maybe it’s a trip to visit friends studying abroad in Europe. Maybe it’s somewhere tropical in the Caribbean.
Me? Not quite.
For the third straight year, I spent a handful of days in Atlantic City, New Jersey, covering the MAAC Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournament.
It’s far from glorious. The city is desolate, but the unlimited hotel casinos that line the often-empty boardwalk create a sense of uncertainty and belief in the air.
The weather this year made things more dreary than any other year I spent covering the MAAC Tournament. It wasn’t terribly cold, but an ever-present fog coated the boardwalk every hour of all of our days in Atlantic City.
Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall, though historic, is dismal in its own charming way. It is not built to host basketball games, and the distant location makes it a tough sell for any MAAC fans to make the trip to attend the biggest games of the year, leading to an abundance of empty seats.
When the dust settled on a tumultuous ending to Marist’s semifinal loss to Merrimack, I was devastated.
No matter how many times I complain about the rickety arena or the underdeveloped, seemingly abandoned, surrounding area, I wanted nothing more than to stay just a few more days in Atlantic City. While I pride myself on being an unbiased journalist, the losses hurt.
Selfishly, I want them to go far. I want to cover a MAAC Championship and write articles about the journey there that get remembered by the Marist community. And covering a game in March Madness? That’d be a dream come true.
But it did not play out that way. Like any casino-driven city, your hopes and dreams are left up to chance in Atlantic City, and the factory of sadness that is Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall can only award two winners, the men’s and women’s champions. Sooner or later, the other nine participating schools in each bracket will have their hearts broken.
Of course, there have been games that left me gutted, feeling empty when shuffling from press row to the postgame press conferences.
I still can see Max Allen’s free throw in the 2024 semifinal that touched every part of the rim but did not go down, and I can still see him returning to the court, still in uniform, with tears in his eyes to shoot a few more free throws before heading back to the locker room.
I can still feel the excitement and palpable buzz that filled Boardwalk Hall as the women’s basketball team almost unthinkably erased a 27-point deficit in the 2025 quarterfinals, and I can still feel the anguish watching Julia Corsentino’s game-winning shot attempt clip the rim before falling into the arms of a defender.
I can still picture the scene that unfolded in front of me on Sunday night, and the looks of jubilation on the faces of Merrimack’s players and coaches, contrasted to the sheer shock on the Red Foxes’ faces.
Games and moments like those are why I do this. It is why I love covering sports, especially big games where tensions run high. It has been an honor to physically see the raw emotion and actions of those involved and turn those feelings into words and stories that go beyond just the box score.
There were plenty of good times in Atlantic City over the past three years, too.
Aside from covering these exhilarating games, the environment was intoxicating. I had the opportunity to meet student-media from many other MAAC programs; seeing their work and ideas opened my eyes to what we could and should be doing at Center Field.
Also, when covering games in McCann Arena, I sometimes forget how big the MAAC is and how far our publication’s reach stretches out around the conference. We met many national media members, and I’ll greatly miss the close-knit group of reporters covering the conference that I reluctantly grew to love (Yes, Sam Federman, I’m looking at you).
As I drove out of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino parking garage, the sun, which we hadn’t seen in five days, blinded me and my passengers, men’s and women’s basketball beat writers, Max Rosen and Cara Lacey.
It was a poetic end to the business trip. We made the most of our time in Atlantic City, despite the depressing weather. Naturally, the sun taunted us on our way out.
Some three and a half hours later, when I put my Volkswagen Taos in park back on campus in Poughkeepsie on a beautiful, 70℉ day that teased the beauty of the Marist spring to come, I couldn’t help but feel sentimental.
I had covered my last Marist sporting event.
Center Field and Marist Athletics have been such a key part of my time at Marist, and each year, the MAAC Tournament feels like a commemoration, the biggest stage for all of the journalistic work that I take so much pride in.
I would have done anything to have one more day traversing through the fog on the boardwalk or one more night covering a do-or-die game in the monstrosity that is Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall, but for me, (pun intended) it was not in the cards.
Edited by Max Rosen
Photo by Cara Lacey
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