Old Dominion to Raise Funds for Stadium Renovation

Old Dominion plans to raise $40 million for its athletic program over the next four years, including $20 million for the renovation of Foreman Field, and will begin playing women's volleyball in 2020, President John Broderick announced Wednesday morning.

Broderick told about 1,500 people gathered at the annual state of the university presentation at the Constant Center that the university plans to raise more than $200 million, including $160 million for academics.

The other $40 million would be raised by the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation, the university's private athletic fundraising organization.

An expanded Foreman Field is scheduled to open in 2019. ODU has pledged to pay for the $55 million refurbishment without raising student fees.

The renovation includes demolishing and replacing the east and west- side stands. Seating would increase modestly from 20,118 to 22,100, but fan amenities, including about 16,000 chairback seats and new restrooms and concessions facilities, would be major upgrades.

The other $20 million would go toward athletic scholarships, with most of it set aside to increase the school's athletic endowment. ODU has about $29 million in its endowment, second only to Rice in Conference USA, athletic director Wood Selig said.

ODU uses earnings from its endowment to help pay for scholarships. Selig has a long-term goal of increasing it to $200 million, which would allow the school to fund all scholarships with interest income.

Adding a volleyball team in part fulfills a promise made by ODU officials a decade ago when they announced they would restart football after a nearly seven-decade absence. At the time, officials pledged that rowing, women's volleyball and softball would eventually be added to increase opportunities for women.

The school added rowing in 2008 and built a $2.3 million rowing center at Norfolk's Lakewood Park two years later. The rowing team had 20 scholarship athletes and 52 walk-on s last season.

But the university has lacked the facilities and funding to add volleyball and softball, officials said.

Although a location for a softball field was identified in the campus master plan adopted in 2014, officials since determined that the school has neither the several acres of land nor millions of dollars it would take to build a Division I stadium.

ODU has also faced increasing financial challenges in balancing its athletic budget. There was a $900,000 decline in Conference USA football TV revenue last year. And a relatively new state law limits how much student fee money can be spent on athletics.

"We must continue to shift support in intercollegiate athletics from fees to fundraising and corporate sponsors," Broderick said. "The good news here is $25 million has been raised in the last three years to do just that."

ODU will spend about $1.2 million per year on volleyball. Broderick said nearly half will be paid for by private donations. ODU's athletic budget last year was about $43 million.

The school will hire a volleyball coach in 2018, begin offering scholarships in the fall of 2019 and play its first season in C-USA in 2020, Broderick said. ODU is the only school in the conference without women's volleyball.

The addition of volleyball moves ODU closer to compliance with Title IX, the federal law that requires equity for male and female athletes. Title IX encourages schools to meet a "proportionality" measurement, in which participation by gender in sports is supposed to mirror enrollment.

ODU was in compliance before adding football and fell even further out of compliance when it moved up to the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2013. The move increased football scholarships from 63 to 85.

Volleyball will add 12 scholarship players and perhaps another 15 participants. And while it will help ODU's numbers, it still won't get the Monarchs to full proportionality.

In 2015-2016, about 43 percent of ODU's athletes (215) were female, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Of ODU's 289 male athletes, 116 were football players.

About 53 percent of its 24,600 students are female.

"We're not where we need to be, but we're making progress," Selig said. "The best way for us to add more women's sports in the future is to raise more money for scholarships."

In practice, few schools meet the proportionality test, especially among mid-major leagues such as C-USA, which produce far less revenue than Power 5 leagues.

Norfolk State's enrollment is about 60 percent female, yet according to federal figures, has twice as many male athletes as female. William & Mary's enrollment is about 56 percent female, but 48 percent of its athletes are female.

Volleyball made sense as the next sport to add, Broderick said, because ODU has a ready-made facility in the Jim Jarrett administration building.

ODU's men's and women's basketball teams vacated the building recently and moved into the $8.4 million Mitchum Basketball Performance Center. The Jarrett building has a practice court, offices and training facilities that can be used for volleyball.

Bleachers may be added to the practice court to hold games there, or matches could be held at the Constant Center.

"We haven't worked out all the details yet," Selig said. "We would be struggling to do all this for softball. Volleyball, on the other hand, is as much ready-made as any women's program we could offer."

Selig said he has asked C-USA to add ODU to its 2020 schedule. Western Kentucky has won the past three league titles.

Girls volleyball is a popular sport locally, with most area high schools fielding teams. ODU also won't have to travel far to find non-conference opponents. Norfolk State, Hampton, William & Mary, Richmond, VCU, Virginia, James Madison and Virginia Tech all have volleyball teams, and most have at least one player from Hampton Roads.

Selig said ODU will also consider adding women's beach volleyball, which is played in the spring, after the volleyball program gets established.

{/span}{span class="print_trim"}It is a growing sport played at more than 60 Division I schools and held its first NCAA championship in 2016. UNC Wilmington and Coastal Carolina are the closest Division I competitors to ODU.

"I think it would be very attractive in this region," Selig said. "We'll see in a few years whether we want to go in that direction."

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