The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- August 30, 1999

Notes

Facilities: Susquehanna University recently announced a $14 million expansion and renovation of its sports and fitness facilities, including a new 3,500-seat football and track stadium. The new stadium will be named in honor of Nicholas A. Lopardo, a 1968 graduate of Susquehanna and a former football and baseball student-athlete at the university. The project also will include a 9,300-square-foot fitness center, a fieldhouse, a new baseball field and practice fields. Stagg Field, which has been the site of Crusaders football for 100 seasons, will retain its name though its location will change. The 51,000-square-foot field house will feature a six-lane 200-meter indoor track, four multipurpose playing courts for basketball, tennis and volleyball, and indoor practice space for field sports. Other renovations will include conversion of the Alumni Gymnasium into racquetball and squash courts, as well as a new free-weights room and additional offices and locker rooms. Construction on the various stages of the project, which already has begun, is scheduled to be completed in August 2001.

Sports sponsorship: Lake Forest College will add women's ice hockey as a varsity sport beginning with the 2000-01 season. Women's ice hockey has competed on the club level for the past 12 years, last year compiling a 19-4 overall record and winning the White Division of the Erin Whitten Conference in the Women's Central Hockey League. T.R. Bell, who has been head women's soccer coach and an assistant coach of the men's ice hockey team at Lake Forest, has been chosen as the school's first varsity women's ice hockey coach ... Shenandoah University will add football in fall 2000 and women's field hockey in 2001. The additions will bring the university's varsity sports offerings to 16. Walter Barr has been hired as coach of the football team. Barr, who coached most recently at Sherando (Virginia) High School, also coached at Shepherd College. A proposed 3,000-seat stadium would be home to both the football and field hockey teams, as well as to the school's existing lacrosse teams ... Washington University (Missouri) will add women's softball in spring 2000. With the addition, Washington will have 18 intercollegiate athletics teams, with nine for women. Softball is the first new sport at Washington since women's soccer made its varsity debut in 1989. Cindy Zelinsky has been named head coach of the new program. Zelinsky, formerly the head softball coach at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), compiled a 97-37 mark in three seasons and led St. Thomas to the Division III tournament every year. The Bears will play a 30-game schedule that includes competition in the University Athletic Association round-robin tournament.

Conferences: The New England Women's Lacrosse Alliance (NEWLA) recently announced that it will expand, adding Salem State College, Nichols College and Western Connecticut State University in spring 2000. Salem State will play in the conference's Northern Division, while Nichols College and Western Connecticut will play in the Southern Division. With Endicott College moving to the Northern Division, NEWLA will now be composed of two eight-team divisions.

Milestones: Augie Schmidt IV, Carthage College, 350 victories in baseball.

-- Compiled by Kay Hawes