When Molly Tully arrived at Lee Field on a Sunday in March, she must have felt a sense of deja vu. Tully, a sophomore in business management, is a midfielder for the women’s club soccer team.
For the first time, the team was required to pay a fee for the use of Lee Field for its home games. The previous weekend, the fields were not lined as the team had expected them to be. On this weekend, not only had the fields not been lined, but the goals were locked up.
While State wound up finding a suitable location at Centennial Middle School, Tully said the situation did not reflect well on the team.
“It’s really embarrassing,” Tully said. “I mean, here you are. You want to look like an organized team. We looked like the amateurs, and it was our home field.”
The Wolfpack was set to host a doubleheader against East Carolina and UNC. The ECU team had already shown up, waiting for its match. However, without goals, Lee Field was useless. Varsity soccer coaches George Tarantini of the men’s team and Laura Kerrigan of the women’s team are the only people who have access to the goals on Lee Field.
“We actually had to call them on their cell phones on a Sunday morning,” Tully said. “They explained to us that it was such a liability that we would never be allowed to use those goals, and that Club Sports not only knew this, but should have told us this. And there was no way to get back our money at the time.”
Amy McRimmon, the president of women’s club soccer, was hesitant to discuss the issue because it is still being worked out with the University. However, she did admit that new University management was responsible for the conflict.
“This year, they got new management, and they required us to pay to use the fields for the first time,” McRimmon said. “When we showed up to one of our home games only to find out that our goals were still locked up, we contacted the people we rented the fields from, and they told us that we hadn’t rented the goals, but we rented the fields”
“It obviously doesn’t make any sense if a soccer team is paying to use a field as a soccer field,” McRimmon said. “You would expect the goals that are on that field to be included, or they would tell you otherwise, so they just decided not to inform us.”
Holly Greer, a sophomore forward, said these episodes could cause other teams to lose respect for State’s team.
“It doesn’t represent us well,” Greer said. “They might think we’re not very serious.”
Besides the problems with the fields, McRimmon said the team has had better seasons.
“We’ve done a lot better,” McRimmon said. “Spring is our slacker season. We have less people on the team. We have 80 people that tryout in the fall, and we had 27 at tryouts this spring. That kind of gives you an idea of how much our activity drops off in the spring. It was not one of our more competitive seasons.”
State went 6-9-3 in 18 games. This past weekend, the Pack wrapped up its season by going 2-2-1 in the Clemson Spring Shindig Tournament. State played Kentucky, Florida State, Georgia Tech, and the College of Charleston before losing to Clemson in the Semifinals.
With the season over, the team is going through the Club Sports office to work out how the field situation will work next year. McRimmon said the club team should not be forced to pay to use campus fields.
“We thought it was kind of ridiculous that a University organization would have to pay to use a public field on campus to begin with,” McRimmon said. “That’s a fact that seems odd to us when we’re paying dues to the University to be a club on top of all the student fees that come along with it.”
Despite the problems, Tully said the future is promising for club soccer.
“I definitely had fun. It’s a great bunch of girls,” Tully said. “With a little straightening out of the kinks, it can definitely be a successful program. It was a good year. We made it to the semi[final]s at Clemson, so that was really promising. It says a lot for next year.”
