First ODU practice nears, first schedule set

The only thing missing is 80 big, sweaty bodies.

That's how many players will report Aug. 13 as members of Old Dominion's first I-AA football team.

On Thursday, the Monarchs finalized their schedule for 2009, when ODU will field a team for the first time since 1940. The school's shiny athletic showplace, the $17 million Powhatan Sports Complex, is awaiting everyone's arrival.

Dark blue leather chairs sit obedient and empty in front of oak tables in team meeting rooms (in addition to a spacious area for players, the offensive and defensive coaching staffs have their own enclaves). Footsteps echo through the locker room, where large wooden lockers with built-in fans to dry shoulder pads and cleats and coated with an anti-microbial laminate stand at the ready. Two huge washing machines, each capable of holding 275-pound loads (and a 135-pound model strictly for coaches' gear) face three gigantic dryers, each with a 125-pound capacity.

It doesn't take much imagination to replace the hard hats strewn across desks with helmets and the sound of jackhammers laboring outside with clacking cleats. But Bobby Wilder is ready for the reality of a building full of players.

"I can't wait," said Wilder, named ODU's head coach in February 2007 after 17 years as an assistant at the University of Maine. "It's the date that all of us as coaches have been targeting since last year, when we set Aug. 13 as the report date. It's what we've all been looking forward to. We're gonna have 80 players walk through the door and come and be part of our first team, our first family."

The Monarchs rounded out their first schedule Thursday, announcing home games against Virginia Union on Sept. 12 and Campbell on Oct. 17 and a trip to Iona on Nov. 14.

Players, who will redshirt this season, will take physicals and pick up equipment Aug. 13 before getting down to business with their first practice Aug. 14. Two-a-days begin Aug. 19.

After spending his first year with the Monarchs selling the program to the community in speaking engagement after speaking engagement — 240, to be exact — Wilder is eager to trade the microphone for his whistle.

"It's been challenging. I'm not gonna lie to you," he said. "I've gone through 18 months of not being a coach. ... To put a whistle around my neck and go be a ball coach — that's the part I miss the most."Construction is racing ahead on the Monarchs' practice fields, currently defined by mounds of gravel. A quarter of a mile away, a $24.8 million renovation is beginning at Foreman Field, which will boast 24 luxury suites, a new parking deck and a state-of-the-art AstroTurf 3D surface when ODU kicks off against Chowan on Sept. 5, 2009.

"The first game and running through the tunnel, leading the team out onto the field ... as a coach, that's what you love," Wilder said. "It's that competition. It's the excitement of putting a plan together, and the plan works. All the rest of what we do the other 354 days, that's just to get to those 11 days when you're doing what you love. "I think about that all the time. I can't wait for Sept. 5."

2009 ODU schedule

Sept. 5 vs. Chowan

Sept. 12 vs. Virginia Union

Sept. 19 at Jacksonville

Sept. 26 vs. Monmouth

Oct. 3 vs. North Carolina Central

Oct. 10 vs. Presbyterian

Oct. 17 vs. Campbell

Oct. 24 at Savannah State

Oct. 31 vs. Georgetown

Nov. 14 at Iona

Nov. 21 at VMI