Why is 'winterizing' Finley Stadium affecting spring football crowd for Mocs?

Staff Photo by Matt Hamilton /   Finley Stadium on Friday, Feb. 12, 2021.
Staff Photo by Matt Hamilton / Finley Stadium on Friday, Feb. 12, 2021.

This time last year, terms such as "contact tracing" and "quarantine" had yet to infiltrate the sports world.

The outbreak of the coronavirus obviously has affected athletic events at all levels, including the pushing of the 2020 Southern Conference football season into 2021. Yet nobody expected "winterizing" to become a Scrabble answer that's currently applicable to Rusty Wright and his University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs.

UTC's original spring opener against visiting VMI this Saturday had to be postponed - canceled may wind up being more accurate - because of COVID issues within the Mocs program. Now it's set for Feb. 27 against Wofford with only family members in attendance due to Finley Stadium being winterized, with larger crowds being allowed for UTC's final two home games against Mercer on March 27 and Samford on April 10.

"The reason that it's winterized is that when the temperatures drop below freezing for multiple days, the pipes start to blow like popcorn," Finley Stadium executive director Chris Thomas said Tuesday afternoon. "February and early March is when most of the damage has occurred, to be honest, and I think one year we had like $40,000 worth of damage because of broken pipes and what not. It's a real deal, and there is no way to prevent that other than blowing out the pipes and letting them be empty during that cold stretch.

"March 1 is when we feel that it begins to become safe, but Chattanooga's had some pretty rough weather in March, too, so that's not even guaranteed. We probably won't have any water going until the week before the March 27 game."

Finley Stadium will only have its South stands open for the opener but will be at 25% capacity for the March 27 and April 10 games, according to UTC senior associate athletic director Jay Blackman. That translates into roughly 5,000 fans at the 20,412-seat facility.

Tuesday's weather in Chattanooga offered a great supporting argument to the reasoning by Thomas, who added that Porta Potties could have been an alternative for increased attendance at next week's contest.

"That was UTC's decision," Thomas said. "We could have an event with Porta Potties without any problem, but I personally think there was such a variety of uncertainty about everything, and rightfully so. I mean, who really knows where all of this is going?

"From our standpoint, there are two ways to break even - you either make more money or you reduce your expenses. One of the expenses we can't reduce is just foolish building maintenance and repairs from not doing something right in the first place. By avoiding that $40,000 repair cost, that's money we don't have to earn from some other place to make it up."

Finley Stadium will be looking to make up for a lot this year following a 2020 that experienced a halting of activity on March 12 and a reactivation on August 18. Thomas said Finley Stadium's income was off roughly 60% last year compared to 2019 and that expenses were able to be reduced by 40%.

To put things in further perspective, only one event was held last April at either Finley Stadium or the First Tennessee Pavilion. Thomas said that was a FEMA meeting in which officials were scouting out various area facilities for potential triage care.

By last October, there were 55 events, with the largest being McCallie's win over rival Baylor before 4,000 spectators.

Thomas said the Finley Stadium campus has a packed calendar up to September, though there are some festivals that are holding off until further vaccine deployment occurs. Included among Finley's roughly 300 calendar events are everything from several Hamilton County schools holding graduation ceremonies to Chattanooga Christian hosting a robotics tournament.

It's the brightest outlook since the outbreak of the coronavirus, but it's also a facility that was built in 1997 and has continuing challenges.

"Our fire systems are 22 years old, and several portions of their components are at the end of their life," Thomas said. "Some of the monitored electronics are starting to report errors, and there are sensor failures at a high degree of incident. It's a very big project, and the total investment is going to be close to $200,000."

The Stadium Corp. board approved a motion to begin addressing that need and also approved a new three-year contract with the Chattanooga FC and a per-game pact with UTC this spring. Board chairman Mike Davis said the Stadium Corp. and UTC have a mutual understanding on a longer-term agreement that could be discussed this April and go into effect July 1.

Odds and ends

With former UTC deputy athletic director Scott Altizer having been announced Tuesday as Tennessee's new director of football relations, Blackman has assumed the role of UTC's liaison to Finley Stadium. ... Chattanooga FC managing director Jeremy Alumbaugh said Tuesday that the NISA spring tournament at Finley from April 13-25 should provide the city more than $1 million in economic impact. ... Former board member Frank Kinser, who passed away Dec. 4, was remembered fondly on Tuesday. "I don't know anyone who bled blue and gold more than Frank Kinser," Davis said, with Gordon Davenport adding, "All he cared about was moving the ball forward."

Contact David Paschalll at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.

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