Petersen Sports Complex will bring new homes for softball, baseball, soccer

Raise your hand if you have ever been to a University of Pittsburgh baseball, softball or… Raise your hand if you have ever been to a University of Pittsburgh baseball, softball or men’s or women’s soccer game. Don’t all jump at once … anyone … Bueller? This is probably because all four teams’ playing fields — especially soccer — are not very accessible to students. But next spring, the Petersen Sports Complex will be completed, and students will not have to travel 45 minutes to see the soccer team.

The Petersen Sports Complex — the result of yet another generous gift from John and Gertrude Petersen — will transform 12 acres of previously unused land on upper campus into state-of-the-art baseball, softball and soccer fields.

All fields will have their own press box, lighting and seating areas and will be made of FieldTurf synthetic grass.

The soccer stadium will serve as the home for both the men’s and women’s soccer teams. It will be used as a competition venue as well as a practice facility.

“The new field will give us a great competitive advantage,” said women’s soccer Head Coach SueMoy Chin. “It will be great to be able to practice and play on the same surface and know it won’t change with the weather.”

Men’s soccer coach Joe Luxbacher said, “This new field will be great, full-sized and with a press box. It will be a first class, soccer-specific facility that will rank among the best in the Big East.”

The current soccer venue, Founder’s Field, is a 45-minute drive from campus, and the current practice facility — the Cost Center fields — are, according to Luxbacher, “less than adequate.” The new stadium has a seating capacity of 735, and will be easily accessible to campus.

“Playing on campus in front of your friends and being overall easier for people to attend means a lot,” said Chin.

The softball stadium will feature a skinned infield to go with the synthetic grass outfield and an eight-foot-tall, 200-foot symmetrical outfield wall, complete with batting and pitching practice areas. It will have a capacity of 600.

“It will be a tremendous upgrade,” softball Head Coach Holly Aprile said. “Just the aesthetics of it. The new field will be just ours. Our own cages, our own field, everything, — and it will help transform upper campus.”

Like the other coaches, Aprile stressed about accessibility to students. She said, “Our current location (behind the Cost Center) is difficult to get to, and we need to worry about the baseball team and the track team sometimes.” Aprile continued, “Right now our fans are mostly parents and other student-athletes who have friends on the team, but with the new location we will be able to draw from the student body much better.”

The baseball stadium will also feature its own hitting and pitching practice areas and synthetic grass. The outfield wall will reach 330 feet down the foul lines, 375 feet to the power alleys of right-center and left-center fields and 405 feet to the centerfield wall.

“We are all very excited about moving into the new facility,” baseball Head Coach Joe Jordano said. “Trees Field has had a great run — but we are ready to move on after this season.”

Trees Field, which is located behind the Cost Center, will be replaced by a new track and field practice and competition venue.

Another major advantage, according to the coaches, comes in the recruiting department. They all agree that it has already helped.

“Just showing recruits the new layout is a big recruiting point,” Luxbacher said. “This helps us get to a level playing field with the rest of the Big East.”

“We can use the field to highlight everything else now, and it is a really great bragging point,” Aprile said. “Before we used to gloss over the topic of where we played our games at when talking to a recruit, but now we can market towards the new field.”