It was a day of celebration for App State Athletics Friday, as ground broke on the new Sofield Family Indoor Practice Facility.
Administrators, coaches and donors gathered just outside of Kidd Brewer Stadium for the ceremony, which was filled with speeches, congratulatory handshakes and applause.
The new 85,000-square-foot multipurpose facility will replace the original 2007 building and will be constructed on the former Sywassink/Lloyd Family Stadium site across from Kidd Brewer Stadium.
The facility will include a full-size 100-yard practice football field able to be used by most of the collegiate sports programs, public-private spaces for health care collaborators, and an event space capable of hosting 100-200 guests, among other features. Sofield will be nearly double the size of the previous facility, with the latter having just a 60-yard practice field.
Chancellor Heather Norris, Director of Athletics Doug Gillin and Vice Chair of the board of trustees Tommy Sofield all spoke at the ceremony.
“As we continue our prominence, world-class facilities are crucial,” Gillin said in his opening remarks. “They’re crucial in the recruitment and development of elite athletes and coaches.”
Sofield, whose family name will appear on the facility, spoke about the opportunity to give back to his alma mater after receiving a football scholarship to play for the Mountaineers in the 1970s.
“We’re just so excited to be able to be part of this, and just a small part of it,” Sofield said.
Norris concluded the speeches by providing more details about how the facility will be able to help not just student-athletes, but the university as a whole.
“The increased size of the new facility will expand the scope of our current programs, not only allowing the facility to be available for broader use across the university, but also to allow for public-private, health care and other collaborations,” Norris said.
After the shovels hit the dirt and the event concluded, Gillin spoke about how the facility could positively impact the future of App State Athletics.
“The immediate impact is when you bring recruits — whether it’s students, faculty, staff — on here, they see a campus that’s vibrant and building and really moving,” Gillin said. Construction on the new Sofield Family Indoor Practice Facility is already underway; however, a timeline for when construction will be finished has not yet been released.
