Field of nightmares?

Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001 | 10:54 a.m.

UNLV softball coach Shan McDonald's long-awaited dream of having a new on-campus softball stadium will have to wait even longer.

When UNLV's women's athletic programs received more than $3 million in gifts from four local donors last March, it was announced that a $2.1 million softball stadium would be constructed in time for the start of the 2001 season.

With the Rebels' home opener less than three weeks away, the northeast corner of Harmon Road and Swenson Street -- the proposed site of the new stadium -- is nothing more than a vacant dirt lot.

That will change, according to UNLV associate athletics director Lisa Kelleher -- but not in time for the Rebels to play a game this season in the new facility.

"The softball stadium will be completed in the fall of 2001," Kelleher said this week. "We're hoping to break ground by our opening conference game, which is March 31 against San Diego State."

According to Kelleher, the cost of the stadium has increased from the time the first plans were drawn up several years ago. Rather than build the stadium in two phases, all parties involved -- including McDonald -- agreed to postpone construction until additional funding could be raised.

"Once we crunched the numbers and put everything that we wanted to do to the project, we came up a little short in terms of funding," Kelleher said. "Rather than cut something out of the project -- and knowing that we couldn't get it quite done by Feb. 1 -- we decided to take the time and get it done right so that we had all the component parts of the project.

"Shan was involved with all that decision making and she has been involved with all of the meetings that we have had with our athletic director and with the (UNLV) foundation people who are actually helping us to do the project."

McDonald was out of town this week on a recruiting trip and could not be reached for comment.

The cost of the stadium has increased from its original $2.1 million to close to $2.7 million, Kelleher said. She added that the UNLV athletics department was "confident" that it could raise the additional money in time for a March 31 groundbreaking.

"We feel pretty comfortable ... that we have earmarked some funds to allow us to make sure that we get the project completed in its entirety by fall of 2001," Kelleher said.

Original contributions from the Donrey Media Group, James E. Rogers and the Rogers family and longtime donors Jerry and Sue Lykins totaled $1.85 million toward the construction of the softball stadium.

The UNLV Foundation, to which the donations were made, raised an additional $250,000 to meet the original $2.1 million price tag.

At the time the gifts were announced, McDonald said the new stadium would allow UNLV to recruit the players it needed to remain competitive on a national level.

"This new stadium has been a long time coming," McDonald said last March. "The stadium is something the current players worked hard for, and they are excited that they will have the opportunity to play there.

"It will also help us improve recruiting for the program by giving UNLV facilities that equal or exceed our competition."