Purdue Recreation & Wellness to celebrate opening of new fields

Purdue Recreation & Wellness will celebrate the opening of its newest facility, which will serve as the new home for nine club sports organizations. 

The grand opening of the facility, located at the intersection of McCormick Road and Cherry Lane, known as the Northwest Recreational Fields, will be Aug. 24. The event opens at 3 p.m. and will include refreshments, give-aways and a chance to interact with the nine Purdue club sports that will call the facility home. Remarks by Howard Taylor, director of Purdue Recreation & Wellness, as well as others will take place at 3:30 p.m. 

Purdue’s cricket, lacrosse, soccer, rugby and ultimate Frisbee clubs will call the new space home. The fields include a competition space for each sport as well as additional practice field space. The competition space includes a lighted area with in-ground irrigation and underground drainage.

“The club sports program is incredibly excited to begin use of the Northwest Recreational Fields this fall semester,” said Kelsey Irby, assistant director of club sports and development. “The new and improved fields will provide the student members of nine clubs with high quality practice and competition space in one, centralized location. Our clubs are thrilled to host more events throughout the year and bring competition from colleges and universities around the region and country to Purdue. We look forward to seeing many Boilermaker victories take place on the new fields.” 

Additional amenities at the fields include parking, a picnic area, restrooms, storage shed, a grounds maintenance building, portable scoreboards, bleachers and team benches. 

The new fields will open for competition with the men’s rugby club hosting Purdue Fort Wayne at 1 p.m. Aug. 25. 

Writer: Matt Vader, mvader@purdue.edu 

Source: Kathy Lawhead, klawhead@purdue.edu