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Showing posts with label Old Dominion University. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Old Dominion University. Show all posts
Our friend Rich Radford at the Virginian-Pilot has this outstanding update this morning. The new GameDay Grass 3D field has arrived and installation will begin any day now. It is an exciting time for AstroTurf, Coach Wilder and everyone at ODU.
That's right, the rug that will be put in at Foreman Field -- artificial turf, astroturf, whatever you want to call it -- was sitting in the back of an 18-wheeler that had it's engine running as I drove down Bluestone Avenue this morning on my way to work.
I stopped and asked Stan and Fred and Pat and Earl what they had in the back of the truck. The conversation went something like this. 'Hey, what ya got in the back of that truck?' 'Rug.' 'From Georgia?' 'Yep.' 'Is it green and does it have stripes on it?' 'It does, as a matter of fact.' 'When's it going down on the field?' 'Dunno. We just deliver the stuff.'
I looked over Stan's shoulder and the goalpost in the north end zone was standing, waiting for rug to be put down around it. And there was a really big opening in the northwest corner of Foreman Field where they are talking about putting in temporary seats to meet the demand for tickets. Looked like a lot of equipment had been moved from that corner. In fact, when I thought about it, Foreman Field had become overgrown with weeds and little bothersome trees sprouting up wherever they could survive.
Now that football is just around the corner -- did you know today marks 100 days to kickoff? -- the place is really starting to look ... clean."
REDSHIRT NATION The Old Dominion football team is practicing hard. After all, the kickoff to their next game is just over a year away.
by Eric Angevine
Old Dominion's football players enter the shiny new football offices through a set of glass doors. Each young man offers a polite greeting to the administrative personnel at the front desk as he passes through, like a tenant to a friendly doorman. The two women behind the desks play memory games, whispering to one another "He's a quarterback. Number 16, I think." As the room clears, one says aloud, "What we need is a roster with photos on it."
They laugh.
As football season starts up across the country, most teams are welcoming 20-25 new players to their rosters—the typical haul. At Old Dominion University, located in Norfolk, Virginia, the FCS start-up program is made up of nearly 100% Freshmen. The whole team. A few of the 17 walk-on players, culled from the student body in open tryouts, are older, but most are fresh from high school. None have ever taken a snap at the DI level.
The Monarchs won't debut their spread offense against their first outside opponent until September 5th of 2009, when they host Chowan. They'll schedule independently before officially joining the Colonial Athletic Association in 2011. This year, everyone's a redshirt.
"They're all just trying to survive," says head coach Bobby Wilder. "They don't know each other, they don't know the system, there's nobody to follow. So they're just figuring it out."
Wilder has an engaging presence and he speaks about his team with a mixture of brutal honesty of what they are now—the team has a website with the full 2009 schedule, a roster and videos of the beautiful facilities being built—and enthusiasm.
Wilder is a native New Englander, with a direct approach and unflappable demeanor dictated by his Maine upbringing. His leadership style is built upon his experiences up North, where he quarterbacked the Maine Black Bears to the championship of the now-defunct Yankee Conference, amassing over 4,000 passing yards by the time he graduated in 1987. He spent two years as a graduate assistant at Boston College before returning to his alma mater as quarterbacks coach. Wilder spent the next seventeen years at Maine (now a part of the CAA's North Division), rising to the position of associate head coach before the Monarchs came calling.
"We looked at some more experienced coaches with bigger names," admits ODU athletic director Dr. Jim Jarrett, "but my theory is that every successful head coach started as a player, then an assistant, and moved up. Somebody has to give them that chance."
Wilder's unrelenting positivity and outgoing nature may have served him as well as anything on his resume. Hired in February, 2007, he spent his first year coaching as both politician and salesman, convincing residents of this seaside city of 2 million that he was the right man for the job, and then trying to convince their sons to come play for him.
Norfolk, home of the Navy's U.S. Fleet Headquarters, is part of the vaunted Hampton Roads recruiting grounds, which annually turns out gifted Division One players in all sports. Allen Iverson and Michael Vick are the big names, but the local talent pool also produced Plaxico Burress, Alonzo Mourning, and MLB's David Wright, amongst many others.
"This area, for recruiting, is really tremendous; a nationally known area," says Wilder. "At first, I wasn't really interested in applying for a job at a start-up program, but that really piqued my interest." The school's all-in commitment to building a competitive program helped seal the deal. Old Dominion has been without a football program since 1940, when the school was still a two-year branch campus of nearby William & Mary College. Debt and lack of interest killed the original program in its infancy, leaving venerable Foreman Field to host mostly high school games for the next several decades.
As interest grew, money was still hard to come by, and an attempt to revive football in 1987 failed. According to Dr. Jarrett, it was former president Roseanne Runte who finally solved the puzzle. "Dr. Runte pushed hard for this," he says. "She got student leaders involved, and they put through a student fee package."
With the student body behind the proposal, the university's Board of Visitors had no problem convincing other donors to contribute to what eventually became an $8 million football endowment fund. In addition, Foreman Field is undergoing a $24.8 million facilities upgrade, and the $17 million Powhatan Sports Center was built from scratch. The center houses the football offices and two fifty-yard practice fields, as well as facilities and offices for field hockey and lacrosse.
The commitment to all sports ensures that Wilder and his lion cubs won't get a free pass at Old Dominion. Monarch teams have won multiple national championships in women's basketball, sailing, tennis and field hockey. ODU's Anne Donovan earned a gold medal coaching the U.S. women's basketball team in Beijing, and alum Anna Tunnicliffe won her sailing race to earn more gold. Men's basketball is routinely atop the CAA standings. Dr. Jarrett says "We expect our teams to compete for championships and national rankings. We won't take money from established, successful sports to support football."
ODU's roots in the area are an immediate boon to recruting if a football history isn't. Defensive End Andrew Turner grew up just down the road. "I'm from Virginia Beach, and all of the coaching staff at my high school went to ODU," he says. "Everyone really stressed that we could make history and do something special, and I was really excited about that."
That pioneering spirit will have to hold the team for some time. If this were a movie, the next year would play out in an inspirational thirty-second montage of weightlifting, sprints, studying and scrimmaging. But the coaching staff, which already includes eight position coaches plus a strength coach, and their 82 new charges will have to live every minute of it in real time. In an attempt to stave off monotony, coach Wilder has planned his schedule meticulously, as though the current season was the real deal. In addition to regular practices and academic study groups, there will be team-building functions and community events in which the Monarchs will get to know each other and their fans. There will also be simulated game weeks. "We project them into next year," says Wilder. "We choose an opponent, do scouting reports, practice for that team, and then kick off an intra-squad scrimmage at 6pm on Saturday night. It's the whole routine." As the team takes to the practice field on an overcast day a week into the football season they all see unfolding on TV, all of that is still ahead of them. The team only has thirteen offensive plays right now, a small part of what will be a full spread offense by this time next year. They have just one defensive set down.
Special teams are limited to practicing punts and PATs in this first week of classes. Wilder watches everything closely, rarely raising his voice. He gives clear directions and claps encouragement. After an hour of drills and calesthenics with position coaches, the players run to the fifty yard line and group around the head coach. He says a few words, they rise together and huddle, right hands raised as they bark "O! D! U!"
Day four of the Old Dominion University preseason football camp saw the Monarchs continue to improve in nearly every segment, but the most memorable moment of the day came during a special teams period.
While working on punt protection and coverage linebacker EJ Watts, formerly of Powhatan High School, stepped in as the punter on the final snap of the period. Watts was an all-district punter in high school and he showed why by launching a kick 60 plus yards, to the enjoyment of the entire team. He had been punting along with the kickers during the week, serving mostly as an extra leg during special teams drills, but even then he had been routinely punting between 40-45 yards.
Not to be outdone, punter Benjamin Knerr also had a solid day averaging 40 plus yards as well. At the quarterback position Bobby Cooper and Dan Pitts both looked good at times and it was evident that they're becoming more comfortable each day. Working with the first team, Cooper showed that he has a strong arm and can make all of the throws, one in particular he squeezed in between defenders during 7-on-7. During the 1-on-1 session Pitts was picked off by Donald Smith on one play, but quickly bounced back to make two great throws including a touchdown pass to Chris Lovitt who had gotten behind DeAnthonyJones.
The Monarchs will be in full pads tomorrow for the first time when practice resumes at 9 a.m. A reminder that due to safety concerns ODU football practices are CLOSED to the public. Fans will have the opportunity to see the Monarch football team during one of the three scrimmages this fall.
Norfolk, Va. – With two days remaining before the Old Dominion University football team hits the field for its first practice, workers are nearing completion on the two new AstroTurf GameDay Grass 3D fields that the Monarchs will use for practice. One field will be a regulation size 100 yards and the other will be a shortened 60-yard field.
The GameDay Grass 3D fields were supplied by GeneralSports Venue (GSV), a certified minority business enterprise and the exclusive U.S. marketer of AstroTurf-branded products. GameDay Grass 3D is one of the most advanced synthetic turf products, featuring best-in-class performance and safety benefits, and characteristics that closely mimic the look and feel of natural grass.
A recent study released by Michigan State University and funded by the NFL Charities Foundation revealed that GameDay Grass 3D most closely replicated natural grass in a comparison of 16 types of synthetic and natural sports turf, based on the torque, force and friction generated by cleated athletic shoes. The study evaluated the potential impact of football playing surfaces on lower extremity injuries caused by excessive torque, or the rotational friction produced when cleated shoes dig into the field. The GameDay Grass 3D system with all-rubber infill had the lowest average torque of all synthetic turf systems tested, second only to natural grass.
To assist in preventing injury, GameDay Grass 3D utilizes a proprietary technology called RootZone, a nylon thatch layer at the base coupled with a monofilament polyethylene long fiber, that replicates natural grass. The density of the RootZone, providing stability, cushion and consistent performance, means that less granulated infill is required, reducing the problems related to infill migration and “fly-out”. The nylon-polyethylene hybrid construction also serves to increases durability and overall system performance.
The installed base for GSV is now well over 150 fields including projects for the likes of Florida State, the University of Texas, the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills.
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."
A recent study released by Michigan State University and funded by the NFL Charities Foundation revealed that GameDay Grass 3D most closely replicated natural grass in a comparison of 16 types of synthetic and natural sports turf, based on the torque, force and friction generated by cleated athletic shoes. The study evaluated the potential impact of football playing surfaces on lower extremity injuries caused by excessive torque, or the rotational friction produced when cleated shoes dig into the field. The GameDay Grass 3D system with all-rubber infill had the lowest average torque of all synthetic turf systems tested, second only to natural grass.
