Fairleigh Dickinson of Florham Park Starts Campaign to Rename Basketball Court After Famed Coach

It goes well beyond the late Roger Kindel’s basketball and golf coaching record, as significant as those numbers are.

It’s also about him as a person, and how he encouraged and inspired others.

For all of the above reasons, the Department of Athletics at the Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Florham location has set in motion an effort to rename its Ferguson Recreation Center basketball court after Kindel, who spent 41 years at the campus.

Jeff Slanovec is head men’s basketball and golf coach. “It was because of what Roger had meant to the FDU community and the FDU basketball community specifically, and for putting in over 40 years of time at FDU,” says Slanovec.

Kristin Giotta, Director of Athletics for Compliance, has been with the school for 17 years. “Roger was my first boss,” says Giotta fondly. “He was the first man that gave me a chance, he was the first man that hired me. I literally took over two days before preseason as a building manager as my full-time job, and as a part time women's soccer coach. I'm very grateful for that opportunity, to be 25-years-old at that time and to have a full-time job. I worked my way up the ladder here, and I owe so much to him, because I obviously personally would not be where I am today if it wasn't for him. He was without a doubt one of the biggest influences here in the athletic department for so many years, and he definitely left his imprint on things with FDU.”

Slanovec recalls talk of renaming the court was set in motion prior to Kindel’s passing in early March of 2020. “It happened very shortly after I took over (2018). It kind of became, ‘Hey, we've got to do this at some point.’ And you never really want to do it right after he retires. Unfortunately, he passed away right before the pandemic started. That I think expedited it a little bit, and it all kind of came to fruition the last couple months.”

During Kindel’s hardwood coaching reign from 1977 – 2005, his teams won 334 games, and they made nine appearances in the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) Freedom Tournament, six in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) tourney, and twice were entered in the NCAA Division III Tournament. Kindel, a three-time MAC Freedom Coach of the Year for basketball, coached golf from 1989-2018, and for a period was also associate athletic director and interim athletic director.

“It's one gym, and it's pretty big,” says Giotta. “We have three courts kind of going across one main court, and then basically three courts that run in the opposite direction, and then we have the screens that come down and separate them if we're running rentals or AAU events or something like that. It’s pretty heavily used and its definitely time for a redo. We have not finished the court this year; we usually do a refinishing every summer, but we have not done that this year. So, we're saving that money for the whole court which we will do hopefully sometime next fall.” And then there’s the possible induction of Kindel into the FDU Athletics Hall of Fame, which has also been discussed. “I think it's our hope next year to possibly revisit that, where Roger can be inducted into our Hall of Fame and then possibly do the court at the same time.”

The hoped-for goal is $150,000 to fund the endeavor, and the mission has been well received. Athletics has reached out to the men’s basketball alumni base. “And the initial response was awesome,” says Slanovec. “I want to say that we've had maybe like 15 to 20 people who immediately upon seeing it donated. We hope that's going to then spark them to push it on to other people, and hopefully that helps us grow our alumni database within basketball a little bit. Roger did so much more than just coach basketball; he impacted so many other student athletes’ lives. We actually had one of the other golf programs in the MAC conference put in a small donation on their behalf. it's been kind of incredible to see how far it’s spread although we are still early in the phase.”

For more information, visit www.support.fdu.edu/devils/kindel-court.