The AU Women's Field Hockey team already appears headed in the right direction.
With a second straight berth in the NCAA tournament last year, an appearance in the quarterfinals and an all-time-high No. 7 rank nationally, next year holds surreal promise for a team bursting with youth.
But as each piece literally fits into place at the new William I Jacobs Recreation Complex, the Eagles know that for the first time in recent memory, they're headed home.
Early this month, construction resumed on the facility after a winter hiatus. Now, the installation of the Astroturf surface is almost finished, and the complex, anticipated for around half a decade, is finally approaching its completion.
It won't officially open until the summer, when the Field Hockey team hosts a summer camp on the surface, says AU head coach Steve Jennings. But already, players and coaches, who for years have traveled to College Park, Md., for practices and home games, are buzzing with eagerness.
"I'm actually not allowing myself to bask in any sort of glory yet," Jennings says. "But we're really excited. The players are on cloud nine at the moment."
While most other outdoor sports have had on-campus venues for years, the AU Field Hockey team has not, because all of AU's fields are natural grass. Almost every Division I field hockey team plays on an artificial surface, including Maryland, which lends its synthetic field to the Eagles, because the ball rolls truer and play accelerates.
The facility, adjacent to Watkins Hall, will sit on a plot of land the Army Corps of Engineers closed in 2001 because of dangerously high levels of arsenic found in the soil.
Prior to that, the space contained a field used for several intramural sports. Since the closure, intramural softball, which played on a dirt infield located on the site, was eliminated from the intramural program, while most other outdoor intramurals moved to a field on Tenley Campus.
For a time, it looked like both Field Hockey and outdoor intramurals would remain off campus because construction was repeatedly delayed. While those in the Athletics Department weren't completely discouraged, they did have to alter expectations.
"I don't think I ever doubted it would be completed," says Robert Andry, AU's associate athletic director of business operations. "We just had to become realistic with our goals of when it would be completed. We knew we had to be patient."
With a softball diamond and beach volleyball court as part of the facility, AU intramurals and likely some club sports should also return to the main campus to use the venue. That's due partly to the vision of the project's primary donor and namesake of the project, William I Jacobs, a graduate both of AU and the Washington College of Law. Jacobs' middle name consists soley of the letter I.
"Obviously, he's been a huge part of our department, and not only in support of athletics but of the University as well," Andry says of Jacobs, who is also the namesake of AU's fitness center. "I think [the facility] kind of embodies what he stands for, giving opportunities to as many people as possible."
The AU Women's Lacrosse team, which currently plays on campus at Reeves Field, will also move onto the artificial surface, meaning less wear and tear to what is already an award-winning grass surface.
The department also hopes the facility boosts the department's image, which has suffered in the wake of the announcement of the elimination of the Men's Golf and Men's and Women's Tennis programs, Andry says.
Andry acknowleges the new facility could send mixed messages to the AU community in light of those cuts.
"We don't want the tennis and golf programs to be secondary at all, and we know that this is a very difficult time for them," Andry says. "I think the main point we want to get across to everyone is that these two issues really are completely uninvolved. ... This project has been in the works for four or five years."
The time element is something Jennings knows too well. Several current players were recruited with promises of a new facility being intact by the beginning of their freshman seasons. Now, with promises changing to guarantees, AU's recruiting effort should get even stronger.
And Jennings, the field hockey head coach, who might have been a hot coaching commodity with the transformation he's led in the program, now says he has all the utilities he needs to build the program he's dreamed of.
"I wanted to come in and make it happen here," Jennings says. "One sticking point was making sure we had a home facility. Now that we have that, there's really no reason to leave. ... I love my kids, and we're on the cusp of doing something incredible."
Perhaps more importantly to the players, they're on the verge of getting to walk, not drive, to morning practices.
