Dayton, UD sports facts:
The University of Dayton Arena is the most-used tournament venue in NCAA history.
Dayton Flyers fans rank among the top 35 in the country in men's basketball attendance, and The Sporting News calls Dayton fans the best in the nation.
This year, the University of Dayton won the "Best Under-the-Radar College Basketball Atmosphere" in a two-week Facebook competition and will be featured during a CBS Sports special at 1 p.m. on March 25.
The Dayton Dragons minor league baseball team boasts the nation's longest sellout streak in all professional sports.
Source: Teri Rizvi, associate vice president of communications at the University of Dayton
Presidential candidates make a dizzying array of stops on the campaign trail, so much so that they probably need to be reminded what state they’re in — let alone the salient attractions of the city they happen to be visiting.
“You gotta know the territory, you gotta know the territory,” isn’t just a slogan from the traveling salesman in “The Music Man.” It’s a survival strategy for presidential hopefuls, as Mitt Romney discovered last week while on a Southern campaign swing. He admitted to a radio reporter in Birmingham, Ala., that the South “is a bit of an away game” for him, and later enthused to voters: “I am learning to say ‘y’all’ and I like grits and things. Strange things are happening to me.”
In light of Tuesday’s visit from President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Dayton Daily News asked local notables about the most important things that the president and the prime minister should know about the city.
Is it important for them to know, for instance, that the University of Dayton’s Marian Library holds more printed material about Mary than even the Vatican?
Or that they can’t just show up at the Pine Club steakhouse and waltz right in past the other folks who are waiting for a table, as George H.W. Bush found out when he was vice president in 1988?
Maybe not. But Sandy Gudorf, president of the Downtown Dayton Partnership, would like them to know “that Dayton is a do-it-yourself town with a comeback-kid spirit. The economy hasn’t always kissed this Midwestern industrial city with kindness, but Daytonians are fearless in their ability to rise above it and, of course, reinvent their city.”
Brian Hackett, former director of Montgomery County Historical Society and co-author of “Gems of the Greater Dayton Region,” echoed the innovation theme, pointing to the technology advances of the Wright brothers, Edward Deeds, Charles Kettering, John Patterson and others. He also spotlighted Dayton’s arts and letters contributions of the likes of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and Erma Bombeck. And Hackett said that Dayton has a prominent place in sports history as well: the Dayton Triangles hosted what can be considered the first NFL football game in 1920 at Triangle Park.
“There is this ‘muse’ that seems to play with Dayton — we often wondered if it was in the water — that allowed individuals a flash of insight that gave the motivation to try things in a different way, to go completely in a new direction, often in the face of traditional wisdom,” Hackett said. “The bottom line is that it never stops Daytonians from trying something new. So I guess I would say to the president that if he is trying to solve a problem and he needs a fresh idea on getting to the answer, then Dayton is a good place to look.”
Amy Haverstick, co-owner and general manager of Jay’s Restaurant, said the world leaders should drop in on the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
And she thinks they ought to recognize that the museum would have been a perfect destination for a space shuttle.
Similarly, former Dayton Mayor and Ohio Lt. Gov. Paul Leonard wants both Obama and Cameron to know that Dayton is the home of aviation, not North Carolina.
And most important, the former Dayton mayor said, is for “the president and world leaders to know the character of communities like ours as a reminder that there’s a lot more to America than the two coasts.”
About the Author