Marshall Approves $30 Million Project To Upgrade Facilities

April 29, 2011 /
The Charleston Gazette (W.Va.), Doug Smock

http://wvgazette.com/Sports/201104281157

It has taken roughly a decade, but the proposed indoor practice building at Marshall University finally has the green light.

On Thursday, the school’s Board of Governors approved a $30 million project that includes the indoor facility complete with a full football field and a track, an academic center and a sports medicine research center.

Also, a new soccer complex will be built on the current site of Veterans Memorial Field House. That is the first phase of the project and the only phase with a defined timetable, a February 2012 start.

The project will be funded by private gifts and by a larger bond issue that includes academic buildings elsewhere on the Huntington campus.

“This is a historic day for Marshall University athletics,” said athletic director Mike Hamrick. “This project will have an enormous impact on every one of our athletics teams and every student-athlete. This is only the first step in addressing our overall facility needs.

“I want to thank the Board of Governors and our president, Stephen J. Kopp, for their support and vision. Without them this project would not be possible.”

The glaring omission is that of a new baseball field, though players on that team will have a better place for indoor workouts. Currently, that team plays its Conference USA games at Charleston’s Appalachian Power Park and nonleague games wherever it can find a playable diamond.

But overall, MU will get a better place in the college athletic facilities arms race.

“I’m fired up,” said Thundering Herd football coach Doc Holliday. “It will take us to a whole new level with recruiting, academics and the whole deal. What it does is allow us to compete with the best teams in the country.”

The push for an indoor building began in earnest in 2002, four years after West Virginia University opened its Caperton Indoor Practice Facility. But then-coach Bob Pruett and athletic director Bob Marcum weren’t as concerned about keeping up with WVU – several schools in the Mid-American Conference had erected such buildings.

And Marshall has since moved to Conference USA, a group of public and private schools which is aggressively upgrading facilities. Some schools, such as East Carolina and Central Florida, feel their facilities are ready for an immediate move to the Big East or other higher-profile conferences.

But sometimes the Thundering Herd and other teams would just love a place to get out of inclement weather, whether it be the thunderstorms of spring and summer or the cold, nasty days of late fall and winter.

The $14 million indoor practice facility will be built adjacent to the 5-year-old, 13,000-square foot weight room, across Fifth Avenue from the recently built softball field. It will occupy a strip of land that includes the current Sam Hood Stadium soccer field.

The facility also will include a $3.5 million academic support center and a $7.5 million Sports Medicine Translational Research Center.

Before all that, the soccer teams will head a few blocks down Fifth Avenue, to a $5.4 million complex that will include a veterans’ memorial. The Field House, home of Marshall basketball from 1950-1981, will be demolished.

The Greater Huntington Park and Recreation District voted Wednesday night to turn the 61-year-old building over to the Marshall athletic department at no cost. The recent spate of storms highlighted the Field House’s disrepair, with water seeping into several areas.

“I want to thank the Park Board for its vision and support,” Hamrick said.

Pruett had his visions for improvements, and began to challenge donors around the turn of the century. When Marcum took over the MU athletic department in 2002, he unveiled his goals, including a new weight room, training room, renovations to the Shewey Athletic Building and an indoor practice facility.

The $2.65 million weight room opened in the spring of 2006, vacating more than enough of the Shewey Building to allow for expansion of team meeting rooms and other improvements.

But by then, the indoor facility had become a sticking point with MU followers. On Sept. 10, 2005, before the Herd took on Kansas State, Gov. Joe Manchin held up an artist’s rendering of the building, which would be named after Pruett.

(The weight room is named after Jonathan Edward Dunfee, but is officially part of the Robert L. “Bobby” Pruett Training Complex. It is uncertain if plans to name the indoor facility itself after Pruett will be followed.)

But in December 2005, Kopp tabled the project, citing an uncertainty over its funding. A facility enhancement fee had been added to football and basketball tickets by then, but that clearly wasn’t going to cover the tab.

As a new softball field opened in November 2007, new locker rooms were built at Cam Henderson Center and new buildings popped up around campus, the indoor building issue kept Herd fans grumbling.

Perhaps Hamrick’s arrival in 2009 helped turn the tide. He called the indoor building a high priority pretty much from the time he accepted the job.

The women’s track and field team, orphaned after the former track was taken in favor if new residence halls, will enjoy a full eight-lane track. The football field will be a full 100 yards, 20 yards longer than that in WVU’s building.

“[Hamrick has] taken no shortcuts,” Holliday said. “I’ve been in places where they have indoor facilities, but you can’t do anything with it. When it’s all said and done, there won’t be any issues with it.”

The remaining issue, it seems, is a new baseball field. The Herd’s last full-time home at University Heights paled in comparison to counterparts in the Southern Conference and the MAC, and has since been abandoned.

That sport is probably the third most prestigious in Conference USA behind football and men’s basketball, with the league getting as many as four of nine teams in the NCAA tournament since realignment. A few schools draw crowds worthy of a good Class A professional franchise.

But Marshall is playing its sixth C-USA season in Charleston, as any number of ideas and proposals have failed to come to fruition – or even close.

Hamrick did not return a call for comment on the issue.


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