Top 10 Highlights - Number 3
WINCHESTER, Va. - For the next two weeks, the Shenandoah University Department of Intercollegiate Athletics will be looking back at its top 10 highlights of the 2008-09 school year.
For the complete list and overview of the project, please click here.
Today, we look at our Number 3 Highlight - Shentel Stadium gets a new name and surface.
In November 2000, as the university was finishing up its first football season in more than 30 years, the school announced plans to build a 2000-seat football stadium.
The Shenandoah Telephone Company of Edinburg, Virginia was announced at that time as entering into a 10-year naming rights deal for the facility, and Shentel Stadium opened on September 15 to a Hornets victory over Gallaudet University.
For seven years, Shentel was an outstanding home facility for the football and men's lacrosse teams but sat unused for much of the year because the natural grass surface could only support one team playing on it in each season.
That all changed last summer with the conversion of the surface to an artificial turf in-fill system.
Thanks in large part to an extension of the naming rights deal with Shentel and the addition of Shentel's corporate partner Sprint, the university contracted with A-Turf of Lancaster, Pa. to install over 86,000 square feet of turf at the stadium.
The six-week project started almost immediately after the completion of the men's lacrosse season in May 2008, and was done in time for the start of summer camps at Shenandoah at the end of June.
With the new surface in place, the men's and women's soccer, women's lacrosse and women's field hockey teams joined football and men's lacrosse in playing their home games in the facility.
A new naming rights deal with Shentel was announced just prior to the football home opener on September 6 against Catholic, and the stadium was rebranded as Sprint Field at Shentel Stadium.
The now 2500-seat facility hosted 50 Shenandoah University home games for those six sports as well as providing a temporary home for the John Handley High School soccer teams in the spring.
In addition to its use a performance venue, Sprint Field at Shentel Stadium was also used by its six "tenants" and by the baseball and softball teams as a practice field. Finally, the nearly $750,000 project reached outside of the athletics realm to enhance the overall student experience by its use for intramural programs.
Photo Gallery of Surface Conversion
