Since 1989 all sports at Catawba College have been apart of the South Atlantic Conference, also known as SAC. Since then, the staff members of the Athletic department have been constantly upgrading the school’s facilities.
Craig Turnbull, the associate Athletic Director and Director of Compliance, is involved in the improvement of the facilities. Turnbull said “In the past five years we have really worked on bringing every athletic facility to the next level.” He has also mentioned that within the next five years, there will be even more projects to come to the school. In the past the softball field, Whitley Field, underwent big renovations such as turning their chain-link fences into netting, upgrading the press box, and upgrading the storage facility. New lights for Whitley Field are going to be added in the future.
Frock Field, the soccer stadium, underwent an update about three years ago. They completely redid all seating for the fans, put in a brand new brick structure for the press box, in addition to a brand new scoreboard and sound system. Turnbull hopes to upgrade the soccer stadium lights as well since they have not had an update since the late 80’s.
One of the two bigger projects is the Turf field and the new track coming to Shuford Stadium, where the Lacrosse, Football, and Track and Field teams will compete. The prospective finish time for this project is Summer of 2018.
The next big project will be a very large upgrade to the Baseball Stadium, Newman Park; the upgrade includes completely redoing the entire stadium, and replacing everything except
for the pitching mound with artificial turf. The upgrade will also include new batting cages and new offices.
Other past athletic upgrades were the new floors in Goodman Gym, a family style bathroom downstairs, and upgraded men and women’s basketball locker rooms. Turnbull stated “this is the first phase of a much bigger project, that’s why we needed to break it into two phases.”
Turnbull also mentioned adding a hall of fame into the lobby of Goodman Gym. Frances Taylor, the director of projects, has also introduced the idea of an interactive touch screen where you can search the name of a previous athlete and find out their statistics and accomplishments from their time here.
Hannah Scott, a junior Women’s lacrosse player at Catawba said “As I look back to my freshman year the small upgrades that have been done as far as decals or even just upgrading offices have made a difference.”
She went on to say that her coaches’ previous office was falling apart. For example, the door was unable to close fully, making it hard to have private conversations and it not the best place to bring recruits because it gave a negative impression. They were moved into the offices in Shuford Stadium on the second floor and she admitted that it was a total upgrade and that it was a much more appealing place to bring prospective athletes.
The big question is when will all of this go from being just an idea to actually becoming a project. Turnbull said, “We’re in neutral, we aren’t moving forward, but we definitely are not going backwards. Just simply staying exactly where we are for now.”
