Canes hold first practice in new indoor facility
Air-conditioned venue gives players a break from heat and lightning.
CORAL GABLES — Lightning didn’t force Miami to practice inside the Carol Soffer Football Indoor Practice Facility on Friday. A celebration did.
The Hurricanes practiced in the indoor facility for the first time in preparation for their second fall scrimmage today.
wanted to celebrate the building today, and we’ve got a scrimmage tomorrow and I didn’t want to take a lot out of them,” coach Mark Richt said.
After a light walk-through Thurs
night to allow players to test the artificial turf field, the team appreciated practicing in air conditioning during another steamy South Florida morning.
“It was awesome. Way cooler inside,” linebacker Shaq Quarterman said. “It really felt good to be here. This has been a long project before even I got here, so it just feels good to see it come to pass and just be in here for the first time.”
Safety Jaquan Johnson added: “I woke up this morning and it was pretty hot. We got to be able to be in the cool shade and run around and fly around and take care of our bodies and not get that much sun on us.”
Soffer and other high-level donors watched from the sideline. Soffer called the building “the best indoor-practice facil-
ity in the nation.”
After practice, Soffer explained why her children decided to donate $14 million toward the construction of the facility — the largest donation in the history of UM athletics.
“My son ( Jeffrey Soffer) came up to me and said, ‘Mom, we want to do something for you,’ meaning he and his two sisters,” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, if you want to do something, I’d like to do it for athletics.’ I am a huge football, baseball, basketball fan. So we met with Blake ( James, UM athletic director), and then we met with Mark Richt, who came in with the plans, and we decided that this is what we wanted to do.”
Richt has pushed for an indoor facility since he was hired in December 2015. He and his wife, Katharyn, donated $1 million to the cause.
“It’s been a passion for Mark since the day we started,” James said.
UM is hoping to raise another $3 million to put finishing touches on the building, including a video board, and support ongoing construction on the football operations area.
“We’re not done with this project,” Richt said. “We’re practicing in it, but we’ve still got a lot of branding to be done. We’ve got things to do in the coaches’ offices and the football operations area . ... I always tell everybody, we’ve got one chance to do it right. Let’s do it right the first time. Let’s not go cheap on anything. Let’s go first class on everything.”
An additional $3 million would bring the overall price tag to $39 million. The original fundraising goal was $34 million.
“This is phase one. We need to keep pushing,” James said. “We need everyone who bleeds orange and green to step up and continue to invest in this program. We all want to see us win ACC and national championships. This was a piece in the puzzle to help us get there.”
The 83,000-square-foot facility features two fields, 80 yards and 40 yards long. It has 56 feet of vertical clearance for kicking and punting, and garage-style doors that allow for an easy transition from the outdoor grass fields to the indoor turf fields.
The 30,000-square-foot football operations area will include team meeting rooms, coaches’ offices, recruiting space and conference rooms. Jesse Marks, senior associate athletics director, called it “a state-of-the-art, self-enclosed office space for football.” It will be attached to the Hecht Athletic Center to make it a “self-contained continuous athletic complex.”
“For the first time in my head coaching career, I won’t have to worry about Plan B,” Richt said, referring to the effect lightning delays have on practices. “This was awesome. When the (lightning) horn blows and we go straight in here, that will be a big day, too.”