April 28, 2024 – Major Arena Soccer League (MASL)
Tacoma Stars News Release
Bellarmine Preparatory School announced that renovations to Memorial Field and its visiting side bleacher complex began this summer. They kicked it off with a ground-breaking ceremony Monday, May 15 at 8:00 a.m.
Phase I of the project, due to be completed by fall 2017, will include an upgrade of Memorial Field, the home field for Lions football, soccer and lacrosse, from natural grass to a synthetic turf, widening of the field and new visitors’ bleachers. Phase II of the project will include upgrades to the Names Gymnasium with completion scheduled for summer of 2018.
“Through the tremendous generosity of the Names Family Foundation, the Boosters, and the broader Bellarmine community, we are finally able to move ahead on this long-awaited project,” said Robert Modarelli B’82, Bellarmine’s President. “This project will be a huge step forward in enabling us to support our young men and women year-round as student-athletes and leaders in wide range of sports and physical education activities.”
The Names Family Foundation pledged $2 million to the project, the largest single gift in support of a capital project in the history of the school. The Bellarmine Boosters are providing $400,000. Significant gifts from additional donors have provided enough funding for the school’s Board to approve the renovation, and the school is continuing to seek and accept additional contributions to complete full funding for the entire project.
When the Boosters built Memorial Field in 1945, Bellarmine was a school of 300 boys that offered only five sports. Today Bellarmine is a coed school of 920 students that participate in 19 different sports. A synthetic turf field gives the school the quality practice and competition space necessary to accommodate all programs, as well as a consistently usable facility for outdoor physical education.
About the Project
Memorial Field will be resurfaced with a new, state of the art synthetic infield system from AstroTurf, the company that invented synthetic turf over 50 years ago. In addition to football, the new, wider version of Memorial Field will easily accommodate regulation soccer and lacrosse fields.
The visiting side bleachers will match the look and feel of the home-side bleachers, which were installed five years ago, and will seat 875 spectators.
Tucci & Sons will be the general contractor for the project.
History of Memorial Field
Memorial Field was dedicated in…