New Ulm Sports Central - Preserving and Sharing New Ulm Area Sports History

By Michael Gassett — Journal Sports Writer

As a post of the Journal report to the New Ulm Sports Central website, this article becomes a saved historical record that is search- ready. A government non-profit organization, Sports Central is supported by contributions and memberships.

NEW ULM - The day was years in the making. The moment was bittersweet.

After years of planning, preparation and building, Martin Luther College finally opened its new state of the art soccer facility to a large crowd Saturday against Upper Midwest Athletic Conference rival Minnesota-Morris.

"It's just really an outstanding facility and anyone who comes to MLC can say, 'wow that's the field I get to play on,"' MLC coach Paul Koelpin said. "It's such a wonderful facility and it can be an attraction to somebody that wants to play soccer in college."

A dream that started in the late 1990s finally became a reality four years ago when the school began construction on the facility.

"This has been a long time coming," MLC athletic director Jim Unke said. "We have been talking about it for a long time. It turned out better than I dreamed it would."

The plan started out to include all 40 acres that surround the complex but the price tag was steep at about $3 million. So they decided to break it down into parts and the new soccer field was the first priority.

"Once we got it broken out, it became easier to fund," Unke said. "Now we have $450,000 in it, and that is much more palatable than the three million price tag."

To fund the complex, the athletic department put together a plan and sent it to the school's governing board.

"When they approved it, they designated funds from the budgets that we have and made it a priority," Unke said. "As the project got started, the donors helped fill in the details."

The first problem MLC ran into was the the make up of the ground. The entire area is made up of clay and doesn't drain well when it rains, making a sloppy, muddy playing surface.

They hired soil consultants to figure out what to do and were told to dig it out and bring in a whole new field. So they did.

"I bet MR [Paving of New Ulm] came through with 3,000 truck loads," Unke said. "But we knew we couldn't deal with what we had so we had to make it better. We had a company from the cities come down with a soil mixer and one of MR's pits and they mixed the sand and peat. It was 85 percent sand and 15 percent peat."

Once it was mixed, they trucked it in and dumped it over the tile and irrigation lines.

Most of the complex had been finished for quite some time but the field wasn't playable until this season. So for the past couple of years, they just watched the grass grow.

"We had the luxury of doing that," Unke said. "We had the 40 acres and our teams played on another field. But everyday, we would go by and say, 'this is going to be cool. This going to be worth it.' Finally we got to the day our teams could actually play on it. It really came into it's form this spring when the grass started to fill in and it turned out fantastic."

Watching it grow was especially tough on Koelpin.

"I would come out here and I would see it and I would just sit on the sideline and imagine what it would be like to play on it," he said.

Maintaining the field is a process as well but so far the crew of Tim Rambow, Rad Pierson and George Schimmele have done an excellent job.

MLC has the field on a specialized program designed by the soil consultants specifically for that playing surface. There is an irrigation system as well and every two weeks they put a rotation of additives and fertilizers on the field to maintain it.

"They came up with the prescription on how to treat the field," Unke said. "It has been a learning process but now the guys can tell by the color what the field needs."

They still have hopes and dreams for the rest of the 40 acres. There is a practice baseball field up there and they are talking about making it into a game field. They also want to continue with the irrigation so that all 40 acres will be irrigated and to eliminate the bumps and rocks on the practice fields.

"Even though we play in here, we still practice on the tough ground out there," Unke said. "So we want to upgrade our practice fields too. It's going to be a process but it's nice to see one piece of the puzzle done."

Although it was a joyous occasion, the mood was also somber. During the dedication ceremony for the field prior to Saturday's contest, the school remembered a pair of soccer players Zach Moyle and Ryan Zweifel that were killed in an automobile accident shortly after school got out in the spring.

"It's just the unusual conjunction of this great feeling of having this venue go up and having the ability to play on it," Koelpin said. "And the fact that these two young men were killed in a car accident. We figured we had to acknowledge it, somehow, because this was our first time on this field because this would have been their first time on this field."

They invited the Moyle and Zweifel family to be apart of the day and they presented the family with the jersey - signed by all of the players on the 2008 men's soccer team - that Moyle and Zweifel wore last season.

"We wanted to be able to say something to them and be able to give them a remembrance of a time that their sons spent playing MLC soccer."

Saturday's game wasn't exactly the first match to be played on the field.

The MLC women had played two games prior to Saturday's contest - both loses and the men had their home opener Friday against Presentation.

That match resulted in a 1-1 tie in double overtime, but in it also came the first goal in the history of the complex by senior Brian Gephart.

"It's just a wonderful, exciting kind of feeling," Koelpin said. "I was excited for the guys. I was excited we got the first goal on the field and I was excited for Brian that he got it."

Both teams are still searching for that first win on the new field. The women fell to Morris 4-0 as the Knights were outshot 39-4 in the contest Saturday.

The men didn't fare much better. Morris came out right away and scored two goals in in the fist six minutes of play and won the match 3-0. The Knights were outshot 40-5.