U of L soccer teams settling into new stadium

They timed it just right, Paige Brown and Chatham DeProspo.

The University of Louisville women's soccer players looked at each other, smiled and pulled back the veil on Lynn Stadium, opening the entrance doors to U of L's sterling new soccer facility on Tuesday afternoon.

"Can you fall in love with a stadium?" said DeProspo, a freshman midfielder from Goshen, N.Y. "It's everything I ever dreamed of playing in as a college soccer player."

The 5,300-seat on-campus stadium across the street from Papa John's Cardinal Stadium is nearly complete, and the men's and women's soccer teams are hosting their media days there this week to provide the first looks at their new digs.

Lynn Stadium cost $18.5 million to build and debuts to the public on Friday, Aug. 29, when the U of L women host Mississippi at 6 p.m. and the men follow with an 8 p.m. game against NCAA runner-up Maryland.

In the meantime, the teams are milling about the stadium's interior, settling into their locker rooms.

The U of L dressing rooms are fit with individualized cubbies for each player, complete with player photos and numbers over their stall, and smart TVs for the coaches to use for team meetings.

There are ice baths and hot tubs in the therapy rooms, and next door, an equipment room is already packed with U of L's new Adidas gear for the 2014 season. The training facility as a whole is 15,500 square feet.

The actual field itself is almost finished. The goals haven't been set up yet, but the red-seated stands are done, with black-lettered Louisville spelled out across multiple sections.

A 26-by-47-foot videoboard towers over the north sidelines, with a grass berm to the left and space for bleachers to the right.

ANC Sports, a sports marketing and signage company based in New York, notes that Lynn Stadium will have more than 3,000 square feet of LED video technology across four different screens through the facility.

It's hard to miss the leather pilot seats for each team bench, too.

"I mean, look at this place," U of L women's coach Karen Ferguson-Dayes said. "This is the nicest facility in the country."

U of L's women left immediately after media day for their first exhibition of the season, a road game against Tennessee at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

The men host their media day on Wednesday. They host Rio Grande in a Friday exhibition at Cardinal Park.