The ongoing construction to the Derr Track area is a project that will give softball its first on-campus stadium, perhaps in time for the program’s initial incoming class to reap the benefits of the program they helped found in 2003.

Softball is not the only team designed to profit from the construction — men’s and women’s soccer’s current facility lacks lighting for night games, and track would also have enhanced resources for their programs — but softball was supposed to be the first.

Since the softball team has never had an on-campus stadium, unlike the other programs, their portion of the project was slated to be the first completed.

For the last three years, including last season’s ACC championship, the team has played its “home” games in Walnut Creek, located approximately seven miles off campus past downtown Raleigh.

Plans for the stadium to be open in time for the season are now in jeopardy.

In fact, there are questions if N.C. State will host the first ever on-campus home game in school history this season or next, according to Senior Associate Athletic Director David Horning.

Twenty-three months and the softball team’s future is still as murky and mired as the puddle its new home has become.

“We’re looking at hopefully getting it done, the completion, by this summer. We don’t know what kind of portions will be complete,” Horning said. “We’re planning on getting it done as quickly as we can. We’re looking at April, and you know softball is a spring sport.”

Last year, the regular season finale was played on April 28 at North Carolina. Before that, the final “home” game at Walnut Creek was played on April 9. The season starts in February.

When softball players Jen Chamberlain and Miranda Ervin were being recruited during their senior years of high school in 2003, they were told they would have a stadium on campus to call home by their sophomore year at N.C. State.

Although no promises were ever made to the players, Chamberlain and Ervin — both seniors and members of the first recruiting class in the program’s history — said there was an understanding that those who laid the program’s foundation four years ago would get to play in an on-campus stadium before they graduated.

“They’ve told me for two years now that it’s going to be done, and it’s not done yet,” Ervin said. “For me and all the other seniors I want to be able to play with them on that field, because we did start the program. We started out here and I think we deserve to be on a field that we can call ours.”

The plans were set a while back, but problems that were unexpected to Horning and others keep the opening date of the new softball field unknown.

The seniors said the looks of Derr Track deflate the hopes they had of their final campaign.

“We’ve come to the point where we’ve accepted that we may never play on that field,” Ervin said. “We can’t let it get in our heads. At this point we can’t control that, so there’s no point in dwelling on it anymore.”

According to Horning, the process is one that is mandated by the state of North Carolina and the law for any campus project.

Horning himself has participated in nearly every design or construction of every athletic facility at State. He also oversees ongoing capital projects and facility renovations for the department.

“The plans [with integrated design] were first developed probably two and a half years ago,” Horning said. “Then they went through a series of re-evaluations on it because of the price of concrete steel. They designed something that was [$7.5 million], which was way over budget because it is a kind of state appropriated, self-liquidating project.”

The process for a project like Derr Track is already lengthy. First, the four phases of conceptual design, schematic design, design development and construction drawings needed to be made, and each takes months to complete.

“Those take about three months each time you go through those phases, and after each phase, it takes about a month and a half to get those drawings approved by the state office construction,” Horning said.

“So what you’re doing, if everything goes smoothly, you’re going to go through probably about a 14-month process of getting file approval after your construction drawings are submitted. And it takes about one or two months to get these [construction drawings] approved and a month after that, it will be bid out.”

The process had already worn thin with Chamberlain and Ervin by that point, and frustration had set in.

“Playing there, playing here whatever — it doesn’t matter; we’re still going to get the job done, but it’d be nice to be able to play on the field and have a banner of the 2005 ACC Championship to show off,” Chamberlain said.

Unfortunately for them, what had already taken awhile was going to need longer than the original 14-month timeline.

The next step included a University committee interviewing architects before voting on one. Then the sides commenced on drawings and the design so that it could be bid out to general contractors.

But the plan came back well over budget, which elongated the process even more.

“[When] the plan goes out to bid for construction and it comes back a million and a half over what you thought the project was going to cost, you’ve got a problem,” Horning said.

To fit within the budget authority, the plan itself had to undergo major changes.

“We had to go back and re-design several kinds of things,” Horning said. “So you can take about a 14-month process, you tag on another seven months and you’re going through a 23-month design process.”

According to Horning, a rainy September and the discovery of a 42-inch drain and line of plumbing installed in the 1950s has continued to delay the project’s progress. Horning said extracting the drain will cost an extra few thousand dollars.

“That was unanticipated in the project, there’s no way we knew six feet down what that thing was looking like,” Horning said. “We’ve got things in the project that causes us to pause and make decisions. Whenever you get more than an inch of rain, that allows a construction company to have an extra day on their contract.”

Softball players can only sit and keep fingers crossed that nothing else will interfere with the already star-crossed project.

“We had all the intentions of going through a 12- or 13-month process and starting probably a year earlier than we did,” Horning said.

“We’re trying to get the project done as quickly as we can and hopefully we can get this thing done in April. Based on the schedule and weather and everything else, we’re going to try to get it done as soon as we can, and that’s all you can say. We’re realistic about the project too. You can’t control all the anomalies.”

These are shared intentions with softball team members, who hope for no more unseen delays.

“Stuff happens and we understand that,” Ervin said. “But it’s not like we can come back here and play on it.”