Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium is a 17,000-seat
multi-purpose stadium
A multi-purpose stadium is a type of stadium designed to be easily used by multiple types of events. While any stadium could potentially host more than one type of sport or event, this concept usually refers to a specific design philosophy tha ...
in
Hadley, Massachusetts
Hadley (, ) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 5,325 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The area around the Hampshire and Mountain Farms Ma ...
, on the campus of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
.
It has been the
Massachusetts Minutemen football
The UMass Minutemen football team represents the University of Massachusetts in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). Massachusetts is the fourth oldest program in FBS. The Minutemen compete as an FBS independent. Since 1965, th ...
team's home stadium since 1965, with the exception of 2012 and 2013, when the team played at
Gillette Stadium
Gillette Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium located in the town of Foxborough, Massachusetts, which is southwest of downtown Boston. It serves as the home stadium and administrative offices for both the New England Patriots of the National Footb ...
in
Foxborough. From 2014 to 2018, the Minutemen split their home dates between McGuirk and Gillette. McGuirk Stadium is also home to the
UMass Minutewomen
The UMass Minutemen are the athletic teams that represent the University of Massachusetts Amherst; strictly speaking, the ''Minutemen'' nickname applies to men's teams and athletes only — women's teams and athletes are known as ...
lacrosse
Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively ...
team.
Originally known as Alumni Stadium, the facility was renamed in 1984 to honor
Warren McGuirk, who was the UMass athletic director from 1948 to 1971. Although it is on the university's campus, which is almost entirely in Amherst, the stadium itself lies just across the town line in Hadley.
History
By 1960, the growth of the University and its burgeoning football program made the construction of a new sports facility a top priority. From the beginning, the stadium was conceived as a multi-purpose facility which could be used for other sports as well as for ceremonial occasions. A sweeping concrete structure whose bold curves and open space express and exploit the vocabulary of its material, McGuirk Stadium was the first major concrete stadium to be built in the Northeast since 1920. One unusual feature is its raised design: the lowest seats in the stands are more than off the ground.
Replacing
Alumni Field, the stadium hosted its first game on September 25, 1965, with UMass beating
American International College
American International College (AIC) is a private college in Springfield, Massachusetts.
History
American International College was originally established on July 18, 1885, as the French Protestant College by Rev. Calvin E. Amaron, who sough ...
, 41–0. The stadium was officially dedicated on October 16, 1965, when UMass defeated
Rhode Island
Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...
, 30–7, in a homecoming contest. The first sellout came on November 6, 1965, as Massachusetts hosted Holy Cross in front of 17,400 spectators.
On November 25, 1972, McGuirk held its largest attendance of 20,000 for the Massachusetts win over Boston College, 28-7. The most recent sellout at the stadium was on September 27, 2014, with a shootout loss against MAC foe Bowling Green, 47–42.
The stadium is also the site of UMass Amherst graduation ceremonies, and hosted the 1987
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
women’s
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
championship. On April 10, 2009, an Amherst resident fell from the stadium in what police believe was a suicide.
UMass now plays in the
Football Bowl Subdivision
The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). As ...
(FBS). McGuirk Stadium's current capacity is only modestly above the NCAA's requirement of 15,000 average attendance for FBS membership. The school upgraded its press box to meet NCAA requirements to bring some games back to campus, and upgraded its indoor training facilities.
Improvements
![Stadium2-4](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Stadium2-4.jpg)
Lights were installed in the stadium for the 2008 football season, permitting UMass to play night games at home on a regular basis. The first game played under the permanent lights was the season opener on August 30, 2008, with UMass beating
Albany 28-16. A video scoreboard was installed during the 2009 season. A new
FieldTurf playing surface was installed in McGuirk Stadium for the 2014 football season.
The plaza on the east side of the stadium behind the ticket gates, MinuteFan Park, hosts food and souvenir vendors and other exhibitors on game days.
On April 20, 2011, the school officially accepted an invitation to become a football-only member of the
Division I FBS
The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). A ...
Mid-American Conference
The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I collegiate athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region that stretches from Western New York to Illinois. Nine of the twel ...
. McGuirk Stadium was not considered suitable for FBS football, however. It would have been prohibitively difficult to meet the minimum FBS attendance of 15,000 fans per game, and its press box and replay facilities were well below MAC standards.
Consequently, the 2011 season was the last at McGuirk Stadium before a major renovation project to upgrade it to FBS standards. For the 2012 and 2013 seasons, the Minutemen played all of their home games at the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
' home field, Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, east of UMass on the other side of the state.
The renovation added a new training facility and locker rooms on the stadium's north end, called the Football Performance Center. The old press box was demolished, with a new box constructed to two levels with more TV and radio booths and added luxury suites. The cost of this construction was estimated at $20 million and was completed in time for the 2014 season at a cost of $34.5 million. Coaching staff and players took occupancy of the Football Performance Center in July 2014.
The deal with Gillette Stadium called for UMass to play several games per year in Foxborough from 2014 through 2016, and left open the possibility for some games to be played on campus at McGuirk Stadium. One of the main reasons for this deal was the MAC's TV contract with
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
typically scheduled a handful of MAC games to be played on Tuesday nights in October and November. If UMass were scheduled a home matchup for one of the weeknight games, the game could be played on campus, negating the need to bus students approximately 100 miles to and from Gillette Stadium late on a school night.
In a 2012 email to the ''Maroon Musket'', an independent magazine covering Minutemen football, athletic director John McCutcheon said once the new facilities are complete, the team intends to play at least one game at McGuirk Stadium until the license to play in Foxborough expired at the end of the 2016 season. McCutcheon also said that there were no plans to expand the stadium, although it would be the smallest stadium in the MAC and the second-smallest in FBS.
Although no plans to expand McGuirk had been formally announced, McCutcheon said in 2011 that "The seating expansion will involve lowering the ground level of the field, and adding 14 new rows of seating in the area created by the sunken turf."
[
On September 14, 2012, the UMass trustees approved a five-year, $3.1 billion capital plan. Included in the plan was $30 million to be spent renovating the stadium as part of the transition to FBS football play. Although construction on the renovations began in March 2013, an official groundbreaking ceremony was held on April 26, 2013, and completed in time for the 2014 season.
In the summer of 2013, UMass secured the services of Perkins+Will to study various stadium expansion options to increase seating capacity; improve the overall structure and site amenities; and enhance the fan experience with improved concessions, restrooms, and fanfare amenities.
The project team, consisting of Perkins+Will, UMass Athletics, UMass senior administration, and members of the Design & Construction Department, met over the course of four design charrettes to develop a series of improvement projects and build-out options for the existing stadium seating bowl and support facilities. The report was completed in the summer of 2013. Projects identified in the report included upgrading the existing stadium structure to improve accessibility; new restroom and concession areas support existing and increased seating capacities; addition of clubs and suites; south end zone seating; and the addition of an upper east grandstand seating structure. These improvements supported a stadium in the range of 30,000 – 35,000 seats. The combination of projects were studied with the existing east seating bowl left in place and renovated to current codes and the demolition and reconstruction of the east seating bowl.
More recently, UMass secured the services of Perkins+Will to update the 2013 Stadium Expansion Study to support a stadium, required code improvements, and fan amenities in support of a stadium in the range of 20,000 to 25,000 seats with the ability to expand in the future.
In May 2018, UMass received a $5.58 million pledge from alumnus Martin Jacobson to fund experiential improvements to the stadium. The pledge provides the support necessary to design and construct a seasonal air-supported indoor structure and contribute to a high-definition scoreboard at McGuirk Alumni Stadium, among other planned fan experience facility improvements. Construction was slated to begin at the conclusion of the 2018 football season, with a formal timeline for completion to be established as the final scope for all the improvements within the project are determined.]
See also
* List of NCAA Division I FBS football stadiums
This is a list of stadiums that currently serve as the home venue for NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, Football Bowl Subdivision college football teams. These include most of the List of U.S. stadiums by capacity, largest stadiums in th ...
References
External links
UMass Athletic Facilities
{{Authority control
American football venues in Massachusetts
Buildings and structures in Hampshire County, Massachusetts
College lacrosse venues in the United States
Lacrosse venues in the United States
Multi-purpose stadiums in the United States
Sports venues completed in 1965
UMass Minutemen football
University of Massachusetts Amherst buildings