Looking for their field of dreams
PULLMAN – Four Washington State administrators are leaving Sunday on a four-day, four-stadium tour around the country as the university continues to prepare for a significant upgrade at Martin Stadium.
Athletic director Jim Sterk, senior associate athletic director John Johnson, associate athletic director Pete Isakson and assistant athletic airector John David Wicker will visit Georgia Tech, Purdue, Ohio State and Louisville. The first three schools have finished major stadium renovations within the last few years and Louisville built a new stadium.
“When you’re in athletics you see facilities in your own league, but now we get to move outside the league,” Johnson said. “It’ll help us fine-tune what we like.”
All four administrators will be examining different details of the stadiums, but much of the research will be geared toward luxury-box amenities and marketing strategies. While WSU hasn’t started to officially solicit donations for the $58 million project, it has been gauging the interest level among potential donors for some time. And with this trip – as well as survey results from a company hired to help determine what improvements are necessary – Sterk and his staff hope to have detailed plans in hand when asking for money.
“(After the trip) you can meet with architects and say, ‘This is what works best for us,’ ” Sterk said. “You need to nail down those things. And we want to start nailing those things down pretty quickly.”
CSL, the company doing the survey of season-ticket holders, is scheduled to present its findings in the first 10 days of June, and so Sterk said he hopes to have the updated architectural outlook complete by the end of that month.
From there, the Cougars will go into an all-out fund-raising mode. The success there will largely determine the long-term schedule for the project, which could begin anywhere in the next few years.
“Some people have volunteered (dollars or time), but really the meat of that will happen once we know what we want to do and what we’re able to do,” Sterk said. “There’s another year of hard work, getting in front of as many people as we can and raising those dollars. We won’t know until we’re well into that.”
Programming Provo
Sterk said he’s working on a deal with another group of Cougars at BYU to fill in an empty slot in the 2006 football schedule. WSU already has non-conference games scheduled with Idaho and Baylor, but the season opener remains empty.
According to the A.D., the schools are making good progress on the deal, which would send WSU to Provo, Utah, in 2006. But the return date for the home-and-home series is still a topic of discussion. The 2007 WSU non-conference schedule is already complete, so the back end of the series would be further down the road.
“We’re close to getting that done,” Sterk said.
Technically, the Cougars have two open dates in 2006 since the NCAA recently authorized a 12th game beginning that season. But one of those slots should be filled by a ninth Pac-10 game if, as expected, the conference’s school presidents approve in June the switch to a full round-robin football schedule.
Notes
WSU is beginning the search to replace Brady Crook, the school’s former associate A.D. for campaigns and major gifts, who is the new Hoopfest director. A national search will take place, and – depending on a possible restructuring of the job’s responsibilities – that newcomer could play a role in the stadium fund-raising. … The Cougars are working on a contract extension with women’s soccer coach Matt Potter, whose team showed progress in his second season despite playing a number of freshmen. Sterk said discussions have been ongoing and could turn into something concrete in the near future.