Field Hockey
It is the first game on the new field built for the team after being displaced from its original playing space — Kelly/Shorts Stadium.
What’s too bad, however, is the team was supposed to start playing on the new field a month ago.
The construction of the field was surrounded by controversy and uncertainty since its inception.
The Board of Trustees were unaware the Athletics Department would need to build a field after the new turf was installed in Kelly/Shorts. The location of the field was not immediately known. The funding for the field — $650,000 — needed to be scraped together.
It is not unreasonable to say the project was thrown together, which is evident by the late opening.
“It wasn’t a smooth process by any means,” said Clint Huhn, assistant athletic director for facilities, of the building process. He said the construction was marred from problems with the weather, the product, the funding and a whole host of other issues.
For its first few home games, the team was required to play at Michigan State University.
That was unacceptable.
In a story this summer when the field was approved for construction, Athletics Director Herb Deromedi said this of the team being able to play on its own field, which he called “their laboratory.”
“This is where they establish leadership qualities, they are able to find themselves and go through adversity and sometimes those things serve them well — long after their last semester of competition.”
It is true.
We can all hope, though, they do not carry on the leadership qualities demonstrated in the building of this field. For the five seniors on the team, that final semester will include only four home games.
The university, after kicking the team out from its venue, should have made sure a field would be ready for the first game of the season.
Could you imagine Central Michigan University’s Athletics Department requiring the football team to play its home games at MSU because its field was not ready?
We couldn’t either.
