Hooker Fields reopens after 3-month renovation

In its first weekend back in use, Hooker Fields will go back to holding its regular activities.

Hooker Fields has been under a $3 million renovation for more than three months and will be finished within the next 30 days.

Bill Goa, director of Campus Recreation, said the field has exceeded his expectations.

“When we removed the center line of light poles and the center fence, it really expanded the size of the field,” he said. “It makes the field a lot bigger. And the addition of the LED lights has more than doubled the lighting levels and has also improved our resources as far as the energy reduction.”

Goa said there will be Wi-Fi on the fields sometime next week.

He said Lifetime Fitness courses will start using Hooker Fields again on Monday.

Darin Padua, chairperson of the Department of Exercise and Sport Science, said LFIT classes that would typically be held on Hooker Fields were moved to other sites, such as Ehringhaus Field, during the renovation period.

Alex Montaner, an event operations intern at Campus Recreation, said it could not accommodate all of its normal programming during the renovation period.

“We only had the Ehaus field,” she said. “Some clubs were either displaced or Ehaus was jam-packed with programming the whole time.”

Montaner said she played intramural flag football when she was a student at UNC.

“(Before the renovations), the turf was like very used up,” she said. “It wasn’t very safe, honestly. The new turf is safer — it’s supposed to decrease the chance of head injuries. We have two club rugby teams, so that was important to them.”

Padua said the quality of the field will be the biggest change affecting LFIT classes. He said the new turf field was a long time coming.

“The previous surface was 10 years old, which is pretty old for a turf surface, especially given how much usage Hooker Fields gets,” Padua said. “It’s pretty much being used all day long from morning until dark essentially. It was really in need of a replacement.”

Montaner said new lines painted on the field allow Hooker Fields to accommodate more sports and include regulation-size fields for rugby and soccer.

Padua said the new field might allow for a wider variety of LFIT courses.

“I think it may expand some of the classes we’ll be able to offer because of how they put in different line markings on the field,” he said.

Construction outside of the field, including erosion control, grass planting and fence installation, will also wrap up within the next month.

Goa said he thinks the renovated Hooker Fields will be a tremendous resource for UNC students.

“I’m sure they’ll actually appreciate it once they got on the field for all of our programming,” he said. “They’re gonna definitely notice a change in the quality of the turf and the quality of the light.”

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