Soccer rings in new season with new field

By Ryan Kuhn
The Guardsman

Since the athletic department has included soccer as an intercollegiate sport to City College, the soccer programs have never been able to play on campus. Finally, their dreams have come true.

After years of planning, a brand new turf field was completed behind Batmale Hall, just in time for the 2011 men’s and women’s soccer seasons.
“The college has never had a soccer facility since it opened. They have been traveling all over the place, and it’s not free,” said former men’s athletic director and current head football coach Gorge Rush, who was in charge of planning. “The parks charge a lot of money to use their fields.”

Last year the men’s soccer team was forced to play home games at Fairmont School in Pacifica, about seven miles south of the Ocean campus.
Just steps from the Wellness Center, the new field will save the college $9,000 per season in field costs , athletic department head Dan Hayes said.
Adam Lucarelli, who has coached men’s soccer for the last 15 years, has played on eight different home fields since coming to City College. He calls the new field his “field of dreams.”

“We are the only team in our conference that doesn’t have their own field,” Lucarelli said. “We tried to turn those hardships into something positive but I was envious.”

Besides saving the athletic department money, the new field will also give the players and coaches the tools they need to succeed this season and in the years to come.

“We have two of the premier soccer programs in Northern California, with both making the playoffs, and I think it gives us a big advantage recruiting,” Rush said. “It gives us a facility that makes the college experience more pleasurable to our students.”

City College was not alone in organizing this project.

AGS, a San Francisco-based architecture and engineering firm, designed and constructed the field. With an emphasis on sustainability, the firm designed the field with issues like water runoff and efficient soil percolation in mind.

The company has completed many projects with the San Francisco and Oakland school districts, and also worked on a wide range of public infrastructures including the new terminal at San Francisco’s International Airport, AGS deputy manager Jinni Bartolome said.

Because soccer season is only during fall semester, the college also branched out to partner with Lick-Wilmerding High School, who currently has interscholastic boys and girls soccer and lacrosse.

“They gave the college $3.75 million for rights to use the field and that gave us the financial werewithal to be able to build the field,” Rush said.

In the last three years, City College athletics has been upgrading its facilities with a new gym and new football field but it has been the soccer programs that have been highlighted so far in 2011.

Women’s coach Gabe Saucedo agrees.

“We have done a lot to make our programs more attractive,” he said. “And this completes it.”