Big news for Georgia's track and football programs

GREENSBORO – Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks had some big news for those in attendance at Friday’s final day of the UGA Athletic Association Athletic Board meeting at the Ritz Carlton.

The Bulldog track and field team is moving its facility to South Milledge Avenue near the current softball and soccer complexes. There’s more. The board also approved preliminary plans to begin construction of both an indoor and outdoor facility at the location, which will now allow Georgia to host SEC and potentially NCAA events.

“We’ve worked with great partners on campus; we’ve worked with OUA on campus. We are looking at some land, some opportunities,” Brooks said. “I think there could be a great parcel of land across the street or close by the soccer/softball complex which would be really neat because then you’d have almost what I’ve termed in my mind almost an Olympic village of those sports in that area so it will be really unique.”

The cost of the project has yet to be determined.

According to Brooks, the University will look at what other programs have done with their track facilities before getting a better idea of the price tag.

“It ranges based on what type you’re going to build. It can really vary. You’ve got to think about seating as one of the big drivers. Track facilities by themselves are not very complicated. Indoors, there are some facilities that are geared towards hosting more large, large events, that’s not really what we’re looking for there. The price varies,” Brooks said. “Thankfully, I’m not an expert in it but hopefully we’re seeing some slowing in inflation so hopefully this may time up well in the next couple of years so there will be some stabilization in the cost of building structures like that. The first thing you look at is peer facilities to get an idea what those costs were, and you also have to factor in the inflation rates if it was built 5 or 10 years ago and what does that mean in today’s dollars.”

Kirby Smart’s football team will also be a beneficiary.

The current track, located adjacent to Lumpkin Avenue and the Butts-Mehre Building, will be converted into a second grass practice field for football.

“When she (track coach Caryl Smith Gilbert) came in, one of the first things she brought up to me, was do we have a vision here? Are we getting this thing where we think we can be the best track program in the country? We’ve already been good, we’ve been competitive indoors and outdoors, but we’ve never been elite,” said Smart, who attended Friday’s meeting. “I don’t think anything hurts a track program more than when a recruit comes on campus, and you don’t have the ability to have a functioning track meet and can’t host an SEC meet because you don’t have enough space to have an event. She and I are on the same page. It’s really important that we do it right.”

Brooks said that’s exactly what the University plans to do.

It’s been 11 years since the current Spec Towns track was last able to host the SEC. One of the reasons? There simply has not been enough room.

"I don't know the number off the top of my head. I know the last time we hosted SECs was 2012 and we had to rent bleachers to come in. If you remember where the old sand pit was, we put the bleachers over there. Seating is one component of it but another component of it is, with my knowledge of track meets, room to spread out,” Brooks said. “You've got so many teams that need to set up team tents in areas, you need a lot of warm-up areas. We're landlocked. We know that. It's a blessing and a curse, but this will give us an opportunity to really spread out. You've got to think, it's not just the track, it's the javelin, it's the hammer, it's the shot, it's the discuss. So having safe areas to that as well."

No date was given for the completion of the project, which must first go to the contractors and designers.

“That would be really difficult to say right now,” Brooks said. “One thing I’ve learned in construction is you don’t want to get ahead of yourself on a timeline. The first step is an RFP, interviewing architects and from that point, when you hire an architectural firm the first thing you would do is start setting up a timeline. It will be premature to give a timeline right now.”

The new facilities will be the latest in a line of improvements to current athletic infrastructure currently underway, including ones to football, tennis, baseball, and softball.

President Jere Morehead disputed the notion that Georgia is finally willing to take on numerous projects at the same time as opposed to the past.

"I know that's the media version of the past, but I think we have always been committed to moving forward. I just think that we've been very careful and methodical. We haven't taken on the massive debt that other athletic programs have taken on across the country,” Morehead said. “I think that's been proven, and I think it definitely showed we had taken the right approach when COVID came along, and we weren't facing the financial challenges other athletic programs were facing because we had been very careful with our expenditures. I think we're moving forward.”

Smart said having an extra grass field will have a huge positive impact on his football program.

Per Smart – who attended Friday’s board meeting and spoke to the board of directors - Georgia is currently one of just two programs in the SEC without multiple adjacent grass fields for the teams to practice.

With this move, Smart said the athletic department can save over a million dollars that it costs to sod and re-sod the current grass practice field.

“The total calendar year, from February 2022 to Feb. 2023, we spent $1.36 million sodding and resodding our one practice field,” Smart said. “You ask why are we having to do that. We have just one grass field. We’re on it continuously. Why do you want to practice on grass instead of turf? It’s safer, right? If it’s safer on grass because we’re on it all the time, you’re spending $1.36 million a year to resod, it’s going to help us to have grass fields side by side that we can use.”

By having an additional grass field, Georgia will now be able to hold 7 on 7 and other camps for recruits and save money that it takes to bus prospective student-athletes to nearby intramural fields.