University of New Hampshire Athletics
Breaking Ground: Celebrating the Stadium
6/16/2015 12:00:00 AM | UNH Insider, Athletics Development
More importantly, as president Mark Huddleston noted to a group of special friends of UNH on Friday night in the east end zone of Cowell Stadium, it was a beautiful event for a beautiful late May night.
The groundbreaking – really more of a donor recognition dinner and in conjunction with a UNH Foundation Board meeting - celebrated a pivotal moment in UNH athletics, a new long-awaited stadium that will serve as the home of the school's nationally ranked football team and host a wide range of events from high school football championship games to the Special Olympics and much in between.
Huddleston, director of athletics Marty Scarano and Andy Lietz, former chair of the University System of New Hampshire Board of Trustees, addressed and thanked the crowd of donors and supporters who have helped make the stadium project a reality.
"It's one of the most exciting things that I've seen in my eight years here," Huddleston said between the speaking and dinner portions of the program. "It's a culmination of a dream for hundreds, thousands of people. It's just wonderful to see it come to pass."
A new stadium has been talked about for years, even decades.
"It's been a journey with a lot of stops and starts, but all that's irrelevant now," Scarano said. "It's a special collection of people tonight because it kind of embodies the people that have been pursuing this for a long time and some of the recent people that jumped on board and made this happen financially. It's just one of those joyous occasions. What I appreciate is, so many people have seen how this has happened. I enjoyed talking to the people that have been there with me for 15 years and shared the frustrations and now they're as joyous as we all are. They can really appreciate this. It's a pretty cool night."
Lietz talked of addressing the needs of the school's athletic facilities through the years by painting and cleaning things up and then adding artificial turf surfaces and lights on various fields.
"We really improved the facilities and a lot was done with a little," he said.
A couple of years ago, ongoing stadium discussions turned to changing the approach to the conversation and a committee was formed. The idea of a private-public partnership to fund the facility was advanced and the group set out to raise $5 million privately to get the project started.
"I'm very proud of the effort by the committee that said we're going to find a way to do this," Lietz said. "I'm very proud of the way Marty stuck with this thing over the last 14 years. He could have given up and said this was never going to happen. And we never could have done it without the great coaches and great student-athletes we have and the way they perform on and off the field. Mark Huddleston, too, deserves a great deal of credit. A lot of people helped make this happen."
Scarano, Lietz and Huddleston  thanked lead donors, the Tom Arrix '86 Family, Service Credit Union and J. Morgan '84 and Tara Rutman, along with scores of other donors listed on a board of recognition.
Arrix, who played lacrosse at UNH and formerly was head of U.S. sales and vice president of global marketing solutions for Facebook, was unable to attend the event but was on campus on Thursday for the UNH Foundation board meetings and met with Scarano and vice president for University Advancement, Debbie Dutton, to check out early progress on the stadium.
Gordon Simmons, president/CEO of longtime UNH Athletics corporate partner Service Credit Union, and Morgan '84 and Tara Rutman joined Huddleston and Scarano for official groundbreaking photographs. Morgan Rutman, president of Willoughby Capital Management, is the chair of the UNH Foundation Board.
Huddleston and Scarano long have stressed that the Stadium will be used for multiple purposes and will benefit the entire state of New Hampshire, much like the Whittemore Center that is home to the school's hockey teams.
"It's for the whole state of New Hampshire," Huddleston said. "It will take a while to sink in, I think, with people. As with the Whitt, in a very short period of time people are going to forget it was ever not here and they'll take it for granted and that's a good thing. That's really a measure of success."
UNH's men's and women's soccer teams, women's lacrosse and men's and women's track & field teams will all practice and compete in the new stadium.
For football games, Scarano wants the Stadium to work for all fans.
"I'm going to start to call this Every Person's Stadium" he said. "I really am very convicted that we've got to do this right. The people that want to be in the club lounge and have a special type of environment, they will have that. And we want a family with two kids to be able to come to the game for $50 and have a great Saturday. It's important we embrace all of that and everybody in the middle.
Huddleston and Scarano also agreed that the Stadium, one of the first spots on campus people will see when arriving from the west, will mark a gateway to the school.
"It will be a front porch to the university, no question," Huddleston said.
Friday night, UNH toasted the people who helped raise the private funds that made the Stadium possible and other supporters as well. Huddleston, Scarano and Lietz thanked all who attended from the podium and then thanked people individually as they showcased the artists' renditions of the stadium.
On the drawings, Scarano and deputy director of athletics Steve Metcalf made note of the club lounge, Service Credit Union has chosen the naming opportunity, and the 'Cat Pack Plaza, which will be named in honor of the Rutmans. They showed supporters the Welcome Plaza, which will serve as the main entrance to the stadium, the grassy berm, the student section and other featured areas.
Scarano and Metcalf then stepped back from the drawings and pointed across the field to where the various spots will sit in the stadium.
Mostly they and the night's guests celebrated the new stadium – construction is now under way and it's due to be completed in time for the 2016 football season – and what it means to the school.
"It's something we've envisioned for a long time," Scarano said. "I think people still don't get the scope of it. When I explain to people the scale of the project, they say, 'Really?' It's going to be eye-opening and it's going to be such a great representation for us. I can only imagine when we're on ESPN in a nationally televised playoff semifinal game on a Friday night at 8. People are going to say, 'Wow, what a cool place UNH is.' That's Mark's vision. Mark saw that right away and said this is about the university not just about athletics."