Sea Gull Stadium unveiled
After 2 years of construction, and many more of planning, Salisbury University’s long anticipated Sea Gull Stadium is finally finished. After a ribbon cutting ceremony, University president Janet Dudley-Eshbach kicked off the ceremony thanking the coaches and players for all they’ve endured, saying “they worked with that old crummy cinderblock building, and during construction even used a maintenance shed as a makeshift locker room.”
For those coaches who endured it with their athletes, the towering $19 million facility, raised from the site of the old field, did more than lift their spirits. Women’s Lacrosse coach Jim Nestor and his players were ecstatic when they saw their new home for the first time. Nestor calling it “jaw-dropping” while his team struggled to find words but summing it up with “amazing” and “unbelievable”.
Complete with a top of the line athletic training room, 5,000 seats for spectators, and 5 new guest suites, it’s clear that everyone at SU is on cloud 9 over the upgrades. However many hope that with the construction of the new state of the art facility can help the Sea Gulls step up their game.
Associate Athletic Director and Field Hockey coach Dawn Chamberlin says “we were kind of falling behind a little bit and in terms of facilities and upgrades and so forth and compared to a lot of teams in our conference – and nationally and this is certainly going to catapult us to the top”.
The stadium features brand new locker rooms for lacrosse, field hockey, and football teams. 172 tons of steel make up the new digs for the Gulls, but President Dudley-Eshbach says there is a lot more digging to be done. She says “this is just one step in a long list of sorely needed changes included in our master plan for enhancing all of East campus”.
The men’s lacrosse team, and their fans, will be the first to break in the new stadium over the weekend.
Note: Salisbury University representatives tell 47ABC the $19 million were exclusively University generated funds, and that no taxpayer dollars were used for the construction of Sea Gull Stadium.
