A groundbreaking ceremony for the new University of Alabama at Birmingham Intramural Fields will be held at 9 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 12. The fields will be located at 1101 Fifth Ave. South. Self-parking will be available at the event site.
The fields are a joint project between UAB Student Affairs and Campus Recreation through the UAB Facilities Division. Campus Recreation will oversee the fields, as well as program and schedule them.
“The fields will be the new home for our intramural outdoor sports, and also the home site for practices and games for our seven outdoor club sport teams,” said Director of Campus Recreation Sean Ries. “We had to cap the number of intramural teams for lack of space, and now we won’t have to do that. It will open up a whole new door, and there is no doubt it will increase participation. We will be able for the first time to host home club games for sports like lacrosse, rugby and ultimate Frisbee.”
The fields will feature lights and scoreboards as well as a building that will have all-gender bathrooms, a water bottle filling station, fountains and storage for the fields. The facility is scheduled to open in fall 2018, with the first flag football game scheduled in September. Two games can be played at once, and the fields will be strategically rotated, so the grass fields do not wear away as quickly. The architect is Holcombe Norton Partners, Inc. The general contractor is Sports Turf Company, Inc.