Scrappy work will wait

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team won't be practicing on a renovated Scrappy Moore Field this season.

Athletic director Rick Hart said the bidding and design process for the major overhaul of the Mocs' practice facility will not be completed in time for the work to be done this summer. Hart said the work likely will begin soon after UTC's season ends in late November.

Getting it done right, he said, was more important than getting it done quickly.

"We don't want in three or five years to be right back where we are now," Hart said.

The project will be paid for out of the $500,000 donation to the program by Renee Haugerud and John Murphy. That gift was made in February, but the project wasn't approved by the State Building Commission until May.

The commission assigned local designer Earthworx to help shepherd the project through the bidding process. During discussions with the design firm, Hart said, he realized the project would not be completed in a couple of months.

"I feel good about the level of involvement and detail that we're getting into now," Hart said. "I think we can probably have bids back in by late summer or early fall, and then, depending on how the bids come back, we'll select exactly what we want to have happen down there."

While disappointed that the Mocs won't have an upgraded practice facility this season, first-year football coach Russ Huesman said he understood that the process takes time.

"You get frustrated but, look, I'm a football coach. We say do something, we do it fast," he said. "I know when you got something this big, there's a lot of steps you've got to take and procedures you've got to go by, and I understand that completely."

The planned upgrades include the installation of an artificial turf field, which will allow the Mocs to practice at Scrappy regardless of the weather. In the past, the team has had to practice on Finley Stadium's artificial surface when it rains because the grass fields at Scrappy would be torn up too badly.

Hart said the artificial surface should be in place in time for spring practice, though any redone grass sections will be off limits until their root systems are strong enough to handle the abuse inflicted during practice.

"We know it's going to happen," Hart said. "We know we're going to have it very shortly, and we know when we do it's going to address the existing problems."