Lacrosse Stadium

[Miggins]

Hobbs mentioned a lacrosse stadium. Not an expert at all but would it not make send to have a soccer/lax combined stadium? 10-15k capacity?

Putting aside fan capacity are soccer and lax fields dimensions work well for a common stadium?

 

[AreYouNUTS]

Hobbs mentioned a lacrosse stadium. Not an expert at all but would it not make send to have a soccer/lax combined stadium? 10-15k capacity?

Putting aside fan capacity are soccer and lax fields dimensions work well for a common stadium?

No. Yurcak Field will be the home of Rutgers Soccer (as it's natural grass, seats 5K, has lights, etc). The new stadium will be 100% lacrosse with a turf surface (this is why we moved to SHI).

IMHO - and those of many others - it would make sense to build the facility back-to-back with Yurcak so certain aspects could be combined, hence, making it one awesome, 2-sport, 2-stadium facility!

 

[Caliknight]

There will be viewing into both stadiums if what is designed comes to fruition.

 

[AreYouNUTS]

There will be viewing into both stadiums if what is designed comes to fruition.

BOOM!

@SF88

 

[richthedentist]

There will be viewing into both stadiums if what is designed comes to fruition.

So have you seen renderings(drawings) of this proposed stadium?
My only worry is we are going to be left without football parking at this rate

 

[AreYouNUTS]

So have you seen renderings(drawings) of this proposed stadium?
My only worry is we are going to be left without football parking at this rate

You haven’t been to too many other CF stadiums have you?

 

[Leonard23]

So have you seen renderings(drawings) of this proposed stadium?
My only worry is we are going to be left without football parking at this rate

What's the worry? This is fantastic news and long overdue. Football parking lots are used 6 or 7 times a year. There would still be plenty of parking close to the stadium with scarlet, yellow, green, white, brown and a much smaller blue, and then a little further back you have purple, black, silver, light blue and tan. While blue would be much smaller, they should also use the adjacent paved Lot 53A, the new Rodkin Center paved lot, and any lot at the new LAX stadium all for blue. Additional parking/tailgating options:

1. Expand light blue to the 3 or 4 lots off Bevier Rd (Lots 58, 58A, 58B, 58C).

2. Expand light tan by converting the Biomedical and Health Science game day cash lots (Lots A, B, C) to season ticket lots (and cash lots, if not sold out from season ticketholders).

3. The Alley.

4. The golf course.

5. Large grass area in front of Werblin at the corner of Bartholomew and Frelinghuysen.

The 2030 strategic plan also had a large portion or all of the purple lot disappearing for a new academic building at some point in the future, so that would also need to be addressed down the road if/when that happens.

 

[MS-RU]

So have you seen renderings(drawings) of this proposed stadium?
My only worry is we are going to be left without football parking at this rate

We have a whole golf course to park on.

 

[Miggins]

Question though, what is the downside of a combined lacrosse/soccer stadium? Does lay-out need to be very different? Turf vs. Grass?

Just considering we do not have a unlimited budget, and I do think funds coming via donations will be under more pressure as many of the dollars are diverted to NIL.

 

[AreYouNUTS]

Question though, what is the downside of a combined lacrosse/soccer stadium? Does lay-out need to be very different? Turf vs. Grass?

Just considering we do not have a unlimited budget, and I do think funds coming via donations will be under more pressure as many of the dollars are diverted to NIL.

Grass vs turf.

I wouldn’t worry about the donations. The lacrosse community has very deep pockets.

 

[rbled]

Question though, what is the downside of a combined lacrosse/soccer stadium? Does lay-out need to be very different? Turf vs. Grass?

Just considering we do not have a unlimited budget, and I do think funds coming via donations will be under more pressure as many of the dollars are diverted to NIL.

Yurcak was built primarily as a lax stadium, as Ron Yurcak was was a former lax All American. It was constructed with natural turf because at the time, artificial turf was still far inferior to grass and it was to be use for both lax and soccer.

However even back then lax couldn’t use the stadium early in the season because it was still winter and the grass was dormant. Playing on dormant grass will kill it and it is very difficult to repair without re-sodding. The lax session now starts even earlier so natural grass is unplayable for much of the regular lax season. Natural grass is perfect for soccer, however and Yurcak is one of the best grass fields in the country and they don’t want to give that up and I don’t blame them.

For lax, field turf is almost as good as natural turf without any of the maintenance issues. The only workable solution is for each team to have their own home field is separate stadiums with appropriate surfaces for each. Playing in a 56,000 seat stadium is not ideal, plus Schiano wants every non-football program out of “his” stadium.

 

[AreYouNUTS]

Yurcak was built primarily as a lax stadium, as Ron Yurcak was was a former lax All American. It was constructed with natural turf because at the time, artificial turf was still far inferior to grass and it was to be use for both lax and soccer.

However even back then lax couldn’t use the stadium early in the season because it was still winter and the grass was dormant. Playing on dormant grass will kill it and it is very difficult to repair without re-sodding. The lax session now starts even earlier so natural grass is unplayable for much of the regular lax season. Natural grass is perfect for soccer, however and Yurcak is one of the best grass fields in the country and they don’t want to give that up and I don’t blame them.

For lax, field turf is almost as good as natural turf without any of the maintenance issues. The only workable solution is for each team to have their own home field is separate stadiums with appropriate surfaces for each. Playing in a 56,000 seat stadium is not ideal, plus Schiano wants every non-football program out of “his” stadium.

IMHO - Lax looks much better in a packed 5,000 seat stadium than a virutally empty 52,000 (or in the case of OSU last weekend, 102,000) seat stadium. I would want the football stadium for football ONLY as well. I get it.

 

[jreinsdorf]

The number of seats frequently gets mentioned as 5,000. Most but not all games will be seated comfortably with that number. My question is, will any new stadium have the ability to add to that 5K? Brecht was correct in a recent interview when he said youth lax participation was "through the roof" the last five years. I see a stadium needing more than 5 thousand seats in the near future. JMO

 

[Caliknight]

So have you seen renderings(drawings) of this proposed stadium?
My only worry is we are going to be left without football parking at this rate

I can’t really say much.

Football parking is less of a concern than having a proper place to play games.

 

[Caliknight]

The number of seats frequently gets mentioned as 5,000. Most but not all games will be seated comfortably with that number. My question is, will any new stadium have the ability to add to that 5K? Brecht was correct in a recent interview when he said youth lax participation was "through the roof" the last five years. I see a stadium needing more than 5 thousand seats in the near future. JMO

Yes

 

[mdk01]

IMHO - Lax looks much better in a packed 5,000 seat stadium than a virutally empty 52,000 (or in the case of OSU last weekend, 102,000) seat stadium. I would want the football stadium for football ONLY as well. I get it.

But if Rutgers can get the Final 4 again it's 25-30,000 in that stadium. Possibly more these days. So not ONLY.

 

[AreYouNUTS]

But if Rutgers can get the Final 4 again it's 25-30,000 in that stadium. Possibly more these days. So not ONLY.

Obviously …but that is NOT happening until we put in luxury boxes.

 

[patk89]

I liked the look of UNC's facility, at least as viewed via tv. I thought they played soccer there as well.

 

[Caliknight]

I liked the look of UNC's facility, at least as viewed via tv. I thought they played soccer there as well.

They do. uva the same. Somehow with they are able to keep the turf playable for m/w soccer and m/w lacrosse. It think it's the weather. We can't play games in Feb on Yurcak. Or March.

Klockner cost $3.4 to build. Crazy what you can build in other states. "Prevailing wage" is a challenge.

 

[patk89]

They do. uva the same. Somehow with they are able to keep the turf playable for m/w soccer and m/w lacrosse. It think it's the weather. We can't play games in Feb on Yurcak. Or March.

Klockner cost $3.4 to build. Crazy what you can build in other states. "Prevailing wage" is a challenge.

$3.4 million? That's amazingly inexpensive. Wonder what the identical facility in NJ would cost? $10 million plus?

 

[mdk01]

They do. uva the same. Somehow with they are able to keep the turf playable for m/w soccer and m/w lacrosse. It think it's the weather. We can't play games in Feb on Yurcak. Or March.

Klockner cost $3.4 to build. Crazy what you can build in other states. "Prevailing wage" is a challenge.

Not the same field, obviously, but I played at UNC in March. Basically, March 20 down there would be Yurcak on May 15 with respect to field preservation.

 

[Caliknight]

$3.4 million? That's amazingly inexpensive. Wonder what the identical facility in NJ would cost? $10 million plus?

Guessing more for the time period. The facility we would want would be $45MM

 

[Leonard23]

Dorrance @ UNC is nicer than Klockner:

I'd go with something more like tOSU and add seats to both sides or even the ends:

 

[Caliknight]

OSU's facility is going to be awesome.

 

[mdk01]

OSU's facility is going to be awesome.

My only quibble with it is it looks like expansion of seating would be difficult except for the walkway area.

 

[rbled]

The stadium I’d try to model after is Stony Brook’s LaValle Stadium. That is one of the nicest small stadiums I’ve visited. It feels like a much bigger stadium but only seats a little over 10k. It has an upper deck on one sideline and one end zone so if you remove those I’d guess you would bring capacity down to around 6k, which would be perfect. What I like about it is it is close to field level and the seating wraps all the way around the field rather than just being bleachers / grandstands.

 

[DowntownT_Brown]

I like stadiums with open areas that allow seating in the grass like Yurcak or Klockner.

 

[Caliknight]

The stadium I’d try to model after is Stony Brook’s LaValle Stadium. That is one of the nicest small stadiums I’ve visited. It feels like a much bigger stadium but only seats a little over 10k. It has an upper deck on one sideline and one end zone so if you remove those I’d guess you would bring capacity down to around 6k, which would be perfect. What I like about it is it is close to field level and the seating wraps all the way around the field rather than just being bleachers / grandstands.

OSU's facility is going to be awesome.

If we can build what we want it will be similar to that, only nicer.

 

[Caliknight]

I like stadiums with open areas that allow seating in the grass like Yurcak or Klockner.

If of the opposite opinion. I think they look terrible on tv. Like you didn’t have a ouch money to complete it.

As nice as Michigans lax stadium is, you see cars driving on the side with no bleachers. Stands on one side is rinky dink. Reminds me of high school.

5k fans surrounding a lax game would be awesome.

 

[rbled]

If of the opposite opinion. I think they look terrible on tv. Like you didn’t have a ouch money to complete it.

As nice as Michigans lax stadium is, you see cars driving on the side with no bleachers. Stands on one side is rinky dink. Reminds me of high school.

5k fans surrounding a lax game would be awesome.

I agree. Much more fun atmosphere with fans circling the field and close to the action.

For any new stadium being built going forward, how it appears on tv should be a primary focal point.

If we can build what we want it will be similar to that, only nicer.

If so, that sounds incredible. I bet it would become the standard for lax stadiums in the future if it happens.

 

[Caliknight]

All we need is $48MM

 

[DowntownT_Brown]

If of the opposite opinion. I think they look terrible on tv. Like you didn’t have a ouch money to complete it.

As nice as Michigans lax stadium is, you see cars driving on the side with no bleachers. Stands on one side is rinky dink. Reminds me of high school.

5k fans surrounding a lax game would be awesome.

Yes just a different opinion which I totally respect as I think Klockner probably presents better than any other stadium on TV.

I think the networks like them too as it gives them a chance to show more fan interaction(as we saw at Yurcak) and rotate through visual perspectives.

 

[Caliknight]

I’m just not a fan. Looks cheap imo.

 

[rbled]

Yes just a different opinion which I totally respect as I think Klockner probably presents better than any other stadium on TV.

I think the networks like them too as it gives them a chance to show more fan interaction(as we saw at Yurcak) and rotate through visual perspectives.

It’s the best of what’s available now but even the newest stadiums are a reflection of college lax 10 years ago. OSU’s will be the first glimpse at the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if lax is a revenue sport within 5-10 years and facilities will reflect that. Look at where CFB facilities were 30 years ago compared to today and I suspect lax will follow a similar trajectory, albeit on a much smaller scale obviously. But the change will happen faster IMO. Title IX is the only thing keeping it from happening faster.

 

[e5fdny]

Gotta say the set up at Shuart doesn’t look too bad:

Been there for Lizards games. I liked the pavilion they have in the lower left for concessions and to stretch your legs at halftime.

Maybe the PLL could bring back the NJ Pride and let them play here again…

 

[AreYouNUTS]

3-sides ala Hofstra is nice as well but, yeah, surround the field!!!

 

[DowntownT_Brown]

It’s the best of what’s available now but even the newest stadiums are a reflection of college lax 10 years ago. OSU’s will be the first glimpse at the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if lax is a revenue sport within 5-10 years and facilities will reflect that. Look at where CFB facilities were 30 years ago compared to today and I suspect lax will follow a similar trajectory, albeit on a much smaller scale obviously. But the change will happen faster IMO. Title IX is the only thing keeping it from happening faster.

The fourth rendering of the OSU facility comingles grass spectator areas with the stands on both the home and away sides.

It will be interesting to see them in the completed project assuming they are not drawn out of the final plans.

If our stadium looks like that we will be in great shape!

 

[Caliknight]

I believe the NCAA considers lacrosse a revenue sport due to the revenue/profit generated at the FF.

 

[e5fdny]

3-sides ala Hofstra is nice as well but, yeah, surround the field!!!

I think they would have if that building wasn’t there already.

And since both LaValle (still is) and Shuart were built originally with football in mind I wonder if ours could have the stands a little closer to the field?

Not sure how big of a buffer is required for lacrosse vs. football.

It’s seems like we are much closer to the field at Yurcak.

 

[Caliknight]

I think they would have if that building wasn’t there already.

And since both LaValle (still is) and Shuart were built originally with football in mind I wonder if ours could have the stands a little closer to the field?

Not sure how big of a buffer is required for lacrosse vs. football.

It’s seems like we are much closer to the field at Yurcak.

You don't need any buffer. The corners and end lines have nets set up so people don't get stung with shots.